Breaches of trust in high school level sports. That's the focus of our latest investigation as we continue to dig deep into the Sabino High School baseball recruiting scandal.
KGUN9 is looking into what's been a prevalent problem nationwide -- misuse of club funds.
Whether it's booster clubs or youth sports clubs, we're seeing more cases nationwide of non-profit organizations abusing their positions of trust because of lax policies and oversight.
Ex-head Coach Mark Chandler helped manage a youth sports club -- Baseballs Next Level -- a non-profit. The owner fired him after the district found Chandler violated A-I-A rules.The firing happened while we began digging into BNL's finances.
Last week we discovered BNL was not in good standing with the Arizona Corporation Commission. It was in danger of being dissolved for not filing the latest Annual Report. After contacting BNL owner -- Bryan Huie -- he fixed it within a day.
We also learned Huie filed an easier streamlined application for non-profit status, which is based on the honor system -- meaning there's little or no oversight by the I-R-S.
So we asked Huie for tax and financial records.
After a few days, we received the tax forms -- postcards over three fiscal years (2015-2017) -- acknowledging gross receipts totaled less than $50,000 dollars a year, but documents we've obtained show parents paid fees for the 2018 Fall/Winter and Summer programs totaling more than $100,000.
We asked Huie for an explanation. He responded, "For tax year 2016, it appears that "Gross Revenues" will exceed $50,000" and that he's amending his annual filings for that year with the IRS, which is allowable withing a 3-year window.
We've asked a handful of times for BNL's financial records and we have yet to receive them, which financial experts tell KGUN should be readily available by a non-profit.
We'll continue to investigate these critical issues involving high school sports.
