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Many of us like to gamble every once in a while. It’s a great way to spice up a game you wouldn’t normally be interested in, like all 17 Arizona Cardinals games this upcoming season. But, Devin Gray, the former athletic director at Greenwood Christian Academy, allegedly took his gambling much too far.
When the job is done well, a high school athletic director makes a real difference for his community. After all, in many small towns across America, high school athletics are the backbone of the community. This was clearly not the case.
The 31-year-old former administrator has been charged with a felony in Indiana for embezzling a ton of money and spending it on VISA Gift Cards, which he allegedly used to gamble on DraftKings. Here is Fox59 in Indianapolis with more.
GREENWOOD, Ind. — A former athletic director at Greenwood Christian Academy has been arrested after police say he stole $42,000 in school funds and used it on sports gambling.
Devin M. Gray, a 31-year-old Greenwood man and the former head athletic director at GCA, was arrested Monday after a felony theft warrant was filed in Johnson County court.
The charge against Gray is the result of a months-long investigation by the Greenwood Police Department, which was first notified of the potential theft in May.
Court documents show GCA Superintendent Michael Chitty reported to GPD officers on May 5 that he suspected Gray, who was employed as GCA’s athletic director from 2020 to April 2023, had stolen thousands of dollars from the school.
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According to Chitty, upon being hired Gray was given a credit card issued through Home Bank and registered to GCA. The superintendent told officers that over the past year, the card had been charged over $40,000.When confronted about this, Gray allegedly said he had been buying Vanilla Visa gift cards “for a good cause,” court docs show. When pressed for more information, Gray told his boss the cards were being given to GCA coaches to buy stuff for their teams.
A review of the financial trail, GPD said, showed that between June 16, 2022, and Oct. 15, 2022, Gray’s card was used to buy $41,325 in gift cards from various Walmart stores. This resulted in $42,564.27 being spent in total, according to police.
However, investigators said that after speaking with GCA coaches it was determined that only $1,150 worth of gift cards had been given out.
Court documents show that a financial advisor working for GCA was able to recover Walmart receipts containing activation codes for the gift cards Gray had bought.
In total, 23 activation codes were recovered. When bank officials checked to see if any of the cards had been activated, it was determined that all of the cards had been redeemed at the online sportsbook DraftKings.
However, that was not the only money that was missing from GCA’s records. While investigating, officers were told by a GCA staffer they thought Gray was stealing concession money collected during sporting events.
“Between the dates of Aug. 22, 2022 and March 10, 2023, the GCA Middle School Athletic Director turned in $15,104.95 in gate and vending deposits,” court docs read. “During the same time frame, Gray turned in $5,833.97.”
During an interview at GPD headquarters, officers said Gray admitted to purchasing around $40,000 in gift cards. When asked how he kept track of the cards, Gray allegedly said that his methods were “sloppy” and that he kept them all unorganized in a safe.
Eventually, court docs show that Gray admitted that “it’s likely” he used the gift cards. Gray allegedly named DraftKings when asked where he would’ve spent the money, but said he had since deleted the account he used.
That’s an incredible amount of gambling, and a wild piece of embezzlement. Let’s hope that justice is served, and he gets the help he needs for what appears to be a serious gambling problem.