McGeary resignation: UA contract details, officers deny embezzlement in Utah

Note: This is the second of three stories examining the issues and facts surrounding the resignation of Lone Peak football coach Tony McGeary.
As detailed in the Herald article published on March 1, a group of parents submitted a 42-page document to Alpine School District officials specifying 28 counts of alleged misconduct by McGeary.
In addition to the camp-related compensation issues that were the focus of the previous article, another significant dispute involved the existence and administration of an apparel contract with Universal Athletics, doing business as UnderArmour.
“Having a contract is not against the law,” said Alpine School District spokesman Rhonda Bromley.
However, after last year’s investigation of Louis Wong and the Timpview football program, ASD officials decided to review all existing contracts and to consider revising their policies about handling them.
The review was made, and any questionable provisions of those contracts were brought to the attention of the coaches and administrators involved.
District officials also decided that from that point forward, all contracts would need to be reviewed and approved by Rob Smith, assistant superintendent for business services.
Bromley said that some of the existing contracts were renegotiated to eliminate the questionable provisions and then submitted to Smith, who subsequently approved them.
However, that was not the case with the Lone Peak football contract.
In a series of emails dated Feb. 9, 2012, McGeary told Pat Weber, his contact at Universal Athletics, that he had to get approval from his administration to sign a contract.
The message does not state but does imply that there were some problems with obtaining such approval.
McGeary and Weber agreed to tear up the existing contract, rendering it void, and to proceed with a “handshake agreement” just using the previous signed contract “as reference.”
The complaint made by Dan McDonald said that McGeary “represented to all the players and their parents that there was, in fact, an Under Armour “contract” and that players would not be allowed to set foot on the field unless they were wearing Under Armour cleats, gloves, etc.”
There are other parents who agreed that this was their understanding, but others in attendance at the same meeting have alternate opinions about how the message was interpreted.
Tom Watkins said the material presented at the meeting resulted in a dilemma for his family. His son is a running back, and Watkins said that UnderArmour did not offer a shoe designed for that specific position.
Watkins said he didn’t have any problem with any other UnderArmour purchases, but did go to McGeary to discuss his concerns about the shoes.
The father said McGeary responded that if there were one or two kids who didn’t wear UA apparel it wouldn’t be a problem, but any more than that might be.
Watkins said his family felt pressured to honor the agreement and support the coach, so they purchased new shoes as well as the rest of the clothing.
However, his son was dissatisfied with the shoes and stopped wearing them a game or two into the season, reverting to his old ones without any repercussions.
Parent Todd McChesney said, “No one was punished for not purchasing UnderArmour products. Some kids still wore Nike and other brands of paraphernalia.”
Howard Hannemann was among those who chose not to purchase any UnderArmour gear.
“This is something that was highly encouraged but still wasn’t mandatory,” he said. “My brother and I already had a bunch of stuff from previous sons being in the program and we didn’t buy anything.”
Several parents were able to produce pictures of multiple players in games wearing other brands of clothing and equipment.
Another financial issue implied in the complaint documents is that McGeary used football program funds for personal expenses.
The term “embezzlement” does not appear in those documents, but has been used on news broadcasts and in the halls of the school.
When properly used, the term means the fraudulent appropriation of funds or property entrusted to your care but actually owned by someone else.
There is no evidence that McGeary ever used any money from either the football program fund or the football booster club fund for non-program expenses.
In fact, booster club treasurer Mike Hall said extensive efforts were made to make sure that the coach was never directly involved in any financial transactions.
Hall explained that two years ago the booster club account was handled independently from the school. He kept all the records, provided copies to the school and even filed a tax return for the organization.
A year ago, a change in District policy brought the booster fund on campus, where the program fund had always been.
Since then, the student finance secretary has received all funds for deposit, and disbursements have been made by the school accounts specialist using checks with appropriate signatures.
These facts have been confirmed both by school and District employees.
Although McGeary and his wife Brenda, also an employee of the school, have been involved with ordering various items in connection with the football program, neither of them have ever had access to any funds, before or after the change in policy.
“I can confidently tell you there was no money embezzled,” Hall said. “We kept Tony completely out of the process so that this kind of thing would not come up and have a chance of catching him by surprise.”
Hall’s statements were echoed by Jill Walton, who managed all purchases for the stadium snack bar. She checked out a credit card from the school accounts specialist to use for supplies, and returned it once the purchases were made.

School official in Utah pleads guilty to embezzlement

Authorities say a former school district official in southern Utah has pleaded guilty to embezzlement.

The Garfield County sheriff's office says Justin Baugh (Bah) accepted a pair of felony charges of misuse of public funds.

The former business administrator for the Garfield County School District was arrested in 2010 after state auditors determined he misappropriated about $70,000 in public funds.

Special prosecutor Jerry Jaeger (JAY'-gur) says Baugh returned about $50,000 almost immediately and will pay the rest in restitution.

Jaeger says Baugh wrote checks to himself, increased his matching 401(k) contribution, took unentitled health-care benefits and helped himself to generous travel stipends.

Baugh was sentenced on Thursday to 30 days in jail and three years of probation.

University of Utah accountant embezzled for 8 years

Jara Jane Wimmer's downfall began in 2001 with a $200 check she wrote to her husband against the account of her new employer, the University of Utah's theater department. By the time the accountant was caught last year, Wimmer had stolen what amounted to a second paycheck for eight years, using the department as a personal ATM and sugar daddy for everything from Mexico vacations to T-shirts to jewelry, according to an internal audit the U. released Wednesday.The audit was completed a year ago, but the U. refused to release it until after Wimmer's sentencing Monday on theft and forgery charges, citing a protection order sought by Wimmer's lawyer. Overruling the U.'s request for serious jail time, 3rd District Judge William Barrett ordered Wimmer, 33, to serve 10 days in jail, perform 200 hours of community service and pay $123,000 in restitution. According to the audit, her thefts total $100,000 more than the restitution order, but that money was excluded from the criminal case because of a statute of limitations on theft.The revelations last year shocked the U.'s theater community, who saw Wimmer as charming, warm and helpful. Yet according to the audit, she had been plundering the department to the tune of $2,300 a month under the leadership of four different chairmen, all the while winning annual promotions and pay raises from a $10-an-hour associate to a $38,750-a-year lead accountant."Jara's name came up as the one everyone trusts and the one that the department can't do without," said theater professor Bob Nelson, who chaired the department from July 2005 until the end of 2008. "I kind of went along with that. I assumed everything she said was true and honest."Wimmer's eight-year tenure as an accountant coincided with the decline in theater arts on campus, described in a review prepared a few months before the embezzlement was uncovered in April 2009.The number of students, credit hours taught, tenure-track faculty and degrees awarded all dropped by a fourth from 2004 to 2008. The department hasn't awarded a graduate degree since 2004, due to the suspension of master's and doctoral programs, and it was running unsustainable deficits, reported the review, prepared by the U. Graduate Council which reviews all university units on seven-year cycles.Although this review was done two years ago, it was made public just recently and the department is now back on a healthy trajectory, according to Raymond Tymas-Jones, dean of the college of fine arts."Great strides have been made that have facilitated a significant turnaround," he said. Careful to not disparage Nelson, Jones said he replaced him as chairman with Gage Williams, a professor of set design whom he characterized as "a godsend.""Under the current chair, the faculty have galvanized and created a sense of energy to address these issues," Tymas-Jones said. Student numbers are up and he expects 26 incoming freshmen to join the actor training program this fall, with about half focusing on musical theater. Policies were put in place to ensure greater oversight on those who handle department funds, he added.Whether Wimmer's misconduct was a cause or a symptom of the department's decline is uncertain, but Nelson contends the theft cost the department 2 1/2 staff positions.When Williams was named chairman in January 2009, his immediate goal was to stanch the department's deficit and that meant exercising more control over finances. The books didn't seem right, so he brought in university auditors to look at Wimmer's use of her recently issued department credit card. They quickly found questionable charges, such as tickets to Cancun, totalling $42,000. She acknowledged in writing that these were fraudulent when auditors and Williams confronted her on April 13, 2009."By the end of that year she had become more aggressive," Williams said. "At that time we didn't know that it had all been stolen. It coincided with university budget cuts. It was a bad time to have someone making it look like we can't manage our ledgers. In reality, we can pay for ourselves."In her "confession," Wimmer claimed that she had only begun embezzling in the fall of 2008 because her husband had lost his job. She said he had no knowledge of the theft and she intended to pay back the money, she claimed."I never meant to hurt the department," she wrote.Further investigation revealed these credit card charges were just the tip of a quarter-million-dollar iceberg with her husband Jason Koerbler's name all over it, literally. Nearly from the beginning of her employment she had been writing him checks, averaging two a month at $700 a pop for a grand total of $113,000.The day after she was caught, Wimmer and Koerbler checked into a West Wendover, Nev., casino hotel where police say they found her with self-inflicted nonlife-threatening injuries and her husband dead. They declined to divulge how he died or how she was injured.Wimmer's lawyer, Tara Isaacson, could not be reached for comment on Thursday.The audit released this week catalogues hundreds of fraudulent credit card charges dating back to 2004, when Wimmer began misusing a professor's card. Most of her illegitimate shopping was done online through Amazon, where she bought such items as a radio-controlled mouse ($16.90), a swimsuit ($104.90), 32 pink purses ($135.70), baseball glove ($189.52) and diamond earrings ($479.99).Wimmer's duties, which included business manager for Salt Lake Shakespeare, the Classical Greek Theatre Festival and Youth Theatre, authorized her to write checks to cover department expenses. Koerbler provided no goods or services to the department, but even if he had, department policy would have barred Wimmer from writing checks to a family member."I'm really embarrassed. I'm not a youngster," said former theater chairman Bob Nelson, who came to the U. from Brigham Young University in 2005 after three years running its theater department. "I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't tear into the books and determine what our sources of income were and what are obligations were."In a letter to the court before Wimmer was sentenced, U. vice president for administrative service Arnold Combe asked the judge to impose a year in jail and to require full restitution."She employed a variety of means to defraud the University, including outright fabrication of order confirmations, delivery notices, and vendor invoices," Combe wrote. "Of all possible penalties, we believe incarceration for an extended period will be most effective in helping deter similar crimes."Barrett, however, opted for a shorter sentence on the rationale that if Wimmer remains employed, she will be better positioned to pay restitution. She now works for a major retailer, although she is barred from handling money.

A grand gift for Grand District, Utah

A late Christmas present has landed in the lap of the financially troubled Grand School District. An anonymous donor is giving the district $700,000, which will save the jobs of seven teachers and enable the district to forego implementing a four-day school week.

"We are elated just elated," Grand District spokeswoman Becky McCormick told the Deseret News Wednesday. Left with $2 million in debt due to accounting errors, Grand District in Moab has been planning, among other cuts, to lay off 50 employees  21 percent of the district's 210 staff members. Even with the gift, they will still have to lay off about 43 employees. "We have run into hard times," said Grand District Superintendent Margaret Hopkin. One result of the extra $700,000 is class sizes won't have to be increased as much as planned. The district had planned to put 36 kids in each K-3 classroom. Now, thanks to the gift, they can reduce that number to 24 kids per class. In grades 3-6, budget constraints had forced the district to consider putting 36 kids in each class. Now they can reduce that number to 30. The middle school guidance counselor position will be reinstated. Educators will maintain their current salaries through this school year, which were the same as last school year. But it's not all good news. The donation is one-time funds, meaning that the school district may still have to go to a four day week next year, and that additional positions may be cut. The district is already slicing its activities fund by $100,000. Hopkin is cutting $10,000 from her $91,000 salary, for which she is contracted to work 260 days per year. Board members are also discussing reducing their stipends. The district is selling off five land parcels, plus its district office. The 3,000-square foot structure was built in 1955, remodeled in the 1970s and could bring potentially $200,000. The board will instead meet in city or county buildings. Grand is discussing posing a voted leeway for an undecided amount in June. A $1.6 million measure failed in November, but district officials say the district now has more public support. Grand District discovered an almost $2 million deficit in September after the death of its business administrator Doug Cannon. Before Cannon died due to illness, property tax revenues were placed in the wrong fund, making it seem as if the district had more money than it did. Budgets were created based on this misconception. Money  which the district didn't have  was spent, mainly on salaries, according to district officials. An audit released by the State Office of Education in December stated there was no evidence of embezzlement. The report outlined recommendations for ensuring financial errors don't continue.