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Case of stolen Fitch HOF funds headed to Common Pleas
By ROBERT CONNELLY
AUSTINTOWN
The case of funds stolen from the Austintown Fitch Hall of Fame was assigned to Mahoning County Court of Common Pleas on Wednesday.
That was done after Martin P. Dyer, 55, of Maplecrest Drive, waived his preliminary hearing in Mahoning County Area Court in Austintown. He is alleged to have taken $13,809.86 from the Fitch HOF bank account and faces a fourth-degree felony for grand theft in the case.
The HOF group was founded by Tim Kelty, who was part of a five-person committee that ran the group for several years. Kelty was joined by Dyer, Jerry Bruff, Patrick Smrek and Eddie Kohl in running the group after its first banquet in 2007. Kelty and Smrek left the group between the 2013 and 2014 banquets, which annually have taken place at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church.
The HOF is an outside organization, and Austintown schools approved the group using its name, but did not have oversight of the group.
Dyer took over the group after Kelty and Smrek left and is alleged to have forged Kelty’s signature on checks totaling $13,809.86. A police report said Dyer talked to authorities during the investigation and told them he took over the HOF in late June or early July 2014.
“Dyer admitted to using the Hall of Fame money for his own personal use,” a police report states. A lawyer for Dyer at Mahoning County Area Court in Austintown declined to comment Wednesday.
Austintown police began investigating the case last November.
Austintown schools treasurer Mary Ann Herschel, who was at Mahoning County Area Court in Austintown for Dyer’s hearing, said the district became involved after the bank called to say the account was overdrawn.
A police report indicated there were anonymous tips to the district about something suspicious going on with the HOF funds in the fall of 2014. Kelty worked with township police in identifying what checks he had written and which were forged. Dyer is purported to have written checks to himself and to his friends, who would cash checks and give him the money.
The Austintown Board of Education decided earlier this year to reboot the HOF with no previous members being involved with the new group. That new group is headed by Daniel J. Bokesch, a former administrator of Austintown schools.