Minor hockey fraud a familiar tale

This is a too common theme in minor hockey circles - happened in our home West London Minor Hockey Association a decade ago and now in Pickering, Ont.
A trusted volunteer treasurer with a gambling problem or debts helps himself to the kids' money.
In the Pickering case, a civil lawsuit resulted in an order to repay the Pickering Minor Hockey Association more than $700,000.
As the Pickering president told the Toronto Star, “I never thought I’d see the day when something like this would happen in minor hockey,” said association president Don Linthwaite. “It brings a sense of disappointment and heartache for the people that do it for the right reasons. I don’t know how somebody could do it. How do you do that?”
But it's happened here and there and everywhere so frequently that you've got to wonder how easy it is and how much has gone unnoticed, unreported or fixed by making quiet restitution.
In West London's case, it ended with a personal tragedy in addition to the financial one when the volunteer treasurer took his life.

Guilty as charged

There are too many cases of trusting minor hockey executives and parents being victimized by volunteer treasurers. The most recent case to work its way through the court system involved the girls' hockey organization in Woodstock, Ont., which lost about $50,000. They realized the fraud when ice rental bills went unpaid.
To their credit, the former treasurer and family members have repaid the organization, Sun Media's London Free Press reports.