Former Santa Clara Swim Club CEO and head coach John Bitter received a sentence of three years and four months in state prison in March, the Silicon Valley Voice reported Tuesday. His four felony charges include embezzlement, grand theft and forgery.
Investigators have found that Bitter embezzled a total of $753,698.37 from SCSC and the courts ruled in 2019 to award the swim club $50,000 in punitive damages, according to the Silicon Valley Voice.
Bitter has reportedly repaid $29,000 of the more than $800,000 in total he owes to SCSC. We wrote in January 2020 that he was selling the Tipsy Coyote, the Arizona bar he bought using $300,000 of club funds, but court records show he is still battling a lawsuit regarding the bar. Any money that survives the lawsuit is to be given to SCSC.
In September 2018, Bitter was fired from the Santa Clara Swim Club after 12 years of head coaching and about 10 years of assistant head coaching at SCSC. Days later, the police began investigating accusations that Bitter embezzled at least $600,000 from SCSC.
In April 2019, the Santa Clara District Attorney filed the four felony charges against Bitter and he pled no contest to these charges in January 2020.
His sentence of three years and four months in state prison is relatively low. When Bitter pled no contest, Judge Socrates Manoukian stated he would serve a sentence no longer than five years and eight months in prison which is already three years less than the maximum sentence of his four charges.
A court spokesperson reportedly said Bitter may be able to serve out his sentence in a local jail rather than state prison, explaining he may have served enough time through custody and modified detention to merit that.
Santa Clara Swim Club has since hired former Scottsdale Aquatic Club head coach and CEO Kevin Zacher as their new head coach.
Man, how far SCSC has fallen from the George Haines days.
Anyone want to start the Tipsy Coyote Swim Club?
I love the name of the bar!
Sorry to break it to you, but he only got time served and probation. He’s out and about.
This is probably more common than reported. I heard, 20 years later, that the treasurer from my summer league team in the 90s was arrested for embezzling a whopping $25k over the course of 5 years. It’s very sad that volunteer parents of swimmers on the team would stoop that low, but here we are.
Bought a bar hahahahh
It’s always weird to me when I see stories like this. That’s a significant amount of money, how the hell did he think he wouldn’t get caught?
Maybe he put a decimal point in the wrong place, people are always screwing up mundane details like that when stealing and laundering money….
Office Space reference? LOL
It is always the same story: he was too greedy to share.
It was from the tech suit 12 and under fund.
They were raising money for a full refurbishment of the swim complex. So I’m guessing those are funds that he took…. maybe he had control and oversight and since it would not have been team operating money, it would be harder for them to know. (that’s just my guess). I was at a national select camp in Colorado Springs where he spoke to coaches about fundraising for the complex rebuild.