Whipped Cream Difficulties

A nine-month independent investigation determined that Billy Hunter failed in his fiduciary responsibilities as the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association and that the union’s executive board should consider replacing him.

Among other things:

• Hunter got $1.3 million for “unused vacation time” without any review.
• Hunter hired family and friends without disclosing that he had conflicts of interest.
• Hunter invested “millions of dollars” in a bank that was failing; his son was a director.
• Hunter “pursued ‘speculative’ business ventures.
• Hunter bought expensive gifts for various people with union money.
• Hunter “spent about $28,000 on personal legal fees for Charles Smith, the former executive of the National Basketball Retired Players Association.”

Hunter’s actions, while questionable, are not actually criminal, according to the report. But: “…Hunter’s contract, which is worth up to $18 million through 2017, is not ‘valid or enforceable.'”

Lawrence wrote yesterday about David Dewhurst’s top aide skimming $600,000 from his campaign, and wondered how you manage to miss $600,000. I have some of the same questions about this next story: a former bookkeeper scammed $100,000 from Masa, the high end Japanese restaurant in New York City.

Yeah, you’d figure it is easy for a bookkeeper to scam money, but it seems like this guy was really stupid:

The bookkeeper, Rafael Thomas, increased his own base salary to $86,000 from about $52,000, according to the indictment. He made company checks out to “Cash,” and cashed them himself, it said, and he skimmed an additional $44,000 from the daily receipts he was supposed to deposit in the bank.

No dummy suppliers? Just checks made out to “cash”? And:

A prosecutor said in court that Mr. Thomas spent $52,000 of the money he took on Internet pornography.

Sometimes, there’s just nothing you can say:

The Catholic priest busted for allegedly dealing crystal meth was suspended after church officials discovered he was a cross-dresser who was having sex in the rectory at Bridgeport’s St. Augustine Cathedral.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I was WRONG!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2013 at 9:12 am and is filed under Clippings, Law, Sports, Stupid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.