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A high school soccer coach in Texas was arrested following an investigation into fraudulent credit card activity that led to the revelation he’d charged thousands on a school credit card while at a gentleman’s club in Houston, Texas.
JD Bales was arrested after being served a grand jury warrant following an investigation into his credit card charges. And ultimately, it appears as if he was his own undoing.
It began back in September when $5,455.81 was charged at The Men’s Club of Houston and it was charged to a district credit card in his name while the former HS soccer coach was attending a coaching clinic in Houston.
Following the massive charge, the Wise County Messenger reports that Bales flagged the $5,455.81 as a fraudulent charge to both the bank and the district.
This led to an investigation into the charges and Bridgeport Police Chief Steve Stanford said “during the investigation, which included information that Bales had formerly claimed the charge was fraudulent (with both the school and the financial institution), investigators discovered evidence indicating a criminal offense occurred.”
Police Chief Stanford went on to say (in a written statement) that “Bales eventually submitted payment for the charge. However, due to the overwhelming evidence in the case (most importantly the case involved taxpayer money), I believed it was prudent to submit the case to the Wise County District Attorney.”
Following the arrest, the national media picked up the story and ran with it.
It’s not every day you see national headlines about a 4A soccer coach from a Texas town an hour northwest of Dallas but it’s also not every day that you see a high school soccer coach charging thousands of dollars on his school credit card at a strip club *during* a work trip, so this really has plenty of attention-grabbing elements for a story to go viral.
This story alone would be enough to garner national attention but it also came off the heels of another story involving the former coach’s soccer team. He resigned in September after evidence of the strip club spending first came to light.
That, however, was just a few months after six players on the school’s varsity soccer team were arrested for hazing after in investigation into those allegations. Hazing is rampant in sports but the allegations listed in that article are much more severe than your typical ‘freshman carry the equipment’ types of rituals.