The Santa Clara District Attorney has filed 4 felony charges against former Santa Clara Swim Club head coach and CEO John Bitter. Bitter was fired by the Santa Clara Swim Club in late September, and news broke a few days later that police were investigating accusations that Bitter had embezzled at least $600,000 in club funds.
Santa Clara Police Captain Wahid Kazem told SwimSwam in November that the department had completed its investigation into the matter and submitted its report to the district attorney’s office. During that investigation, the Santa Clara Police Department found that Bitter used the money to purchase a bar and restaurant in Arizona.
The 4 felony charges include grand theft. In California, felonious grand theft carries a sentence of up to 3 years in state prison. There are additional enhancements to that sentence depending on the value attached to the theft. While the charges didn’t specifically attach a value, $600,000 would carry an additional 2 year enhancement.
Allison Beebe, who was previously a ‘lead coach,’ is now listed as the head coach of the club.
Raise your hand if you paid ASCA an absorbent amount of money in Anaheim to take the ASCA Level 5 Admin Class for 6 hours with John Bitter where he did about a 45 minute shpeal on “running an honest club” and “being transparent with your board is the key to success”. What a crock of sh*t. Truthfully, the longer I’m in this profession of swim coaching the more and more low life felons and folks with such shady practices it’s absolutely baffling these people work with children. Still waiting for ASCA to refund my $$ for that class…crickets. They should have a follow up class “Everything John Bitter said in our ASCA Level 5 class…don’t do that”. Unbelievable.
In the article about John Bitter’s termination that Swimswam published six months ago, commenter “Anonymous” was all over the place making threats of suing people for slander…
Ayo Anonymous, where you at?
No way this much money disappeared in a vacuum. There has to be some serious negligence going on behind the scenes. When will start looking into the board?
It’s very disturbing that the Board was unaware of these issues. Had they never conducted any audits to reveal the corruption? I think the Board should also be investigated
How is the investigation of the Board going?
Actually , what about other employees? He did not act alone…
Investigate the board
How did the board not know about this? It seems like such a giant failure on their end and that their lack of oversight allowed for this to happen. This is a great program but it seems the lack of leadership and accountability created this issue. This board is is accountable for the actions that occurred under their watch.
Anyone know the name of his restaurant? Asking for a friend
Graybar
Tipsy Coyote in Scottsdale
So I recently (re) read the book Gold in the Water by PH Mullen (outlines the journey of several Santa Clara swimmers in their journey to Sydney, notably Tom Wilkens and Dara Torres, highly recommend). In the book it talks about how the SCSC was missing a ton of money and heavy eyes were on head coach Dick Jochums, but that eventually it turned out it was young assistant coach John Bitter who was at fault, but nothing happened because it turns out he was just young and lazy and careless. The author concludes he did nothing wrong, and it was all basically a misunderstanding that was a result of the masters team not paying their dues as regularly as… Read more »
The current charges are in relation to events in 2018.
yep
Funny, as I read that book 10 years ago, but as soon as I saw this article, I remembered that name and the book discussion, Yes, it seems he figured what worked once might work again!