Woman charged in thefts from club
SCHUYLKILL TOWNSHIP >> A Montgomery County woman who worked as a manager at the Phoenixville County Club here has been charged with stealing more than $60,000 from the club’s coffers over a period of 18 months, using some of the money to fund gambling trips at area casinos, according to police.
Amy Clark, who served as assistant manager at the club until leaving abruptly in July 2018 as Schuylkill Township Police began investigating financial wrongdoing there, is the subject of a criminal complaint filed in District Court in Phoenixville.
Clark, 48, of Limerick, was charged with multiple counts of theft by unlawful taking or disposition, receiving stolen property, criminal use of a communications device, dealing in unlawful proceeds, and conspiracy.
She was arraigned on Thursday by District Judge John Bailey of West Whiteland, who set bail at $50,000 unsecured. A preliminary hearing before District Judge Joann Teyral of Phoenixville was tentatively scheduled for Nov. 6.
Clark is currently listed as the assistant clubhouse manager at Cedarbrook Country Club in Blue Bell.
She is the second former employee at the Phoenixville club who has been arrested and charged with embezzling funds from the club.
In March, township police charged Grace Elizabeth Crosson with taking more than $88,000 in funds from the club, using that money over a period of months before she was fired to pay for a “lavish lifestyle,” including luxuries from meals out and online purchases to concert tickets and two trips on a Royal Caribbean Cruise ship.
Crosson, of West Chester,
who had previously been convicted of theft from a business she worked at in West Goshen, is awaiting trial on the theft charges in Chester County Common Pleas Court.
In his complaint against Clark, Schuylkill Officer Brian McCarthy wrote that it was while he was pursuing the overall investigation into financial problems at the country club that he noted suspicious transactions involving Clark and club General Manager Anthony Lucas. Both Lucas and Clark had resigned on the same day, July 1, 2018, about two months after McCarthy was assigned to review complaints of theft made by officials at the club.
He wrote that he found that even though Clark was making less than $50,000 a year, both from her work at the country club and other income, she was spending far in excess of that at area casinos, hotels both locally and abroad, on medical expenses, and paying off more than $70,000 in credit card balances.
“I found it suspicious that Clark would have been able to sustain the lifestyle she was living with this type of income,” the officer wrote.
The accusations McCarthy made in his complaint are that Clark received 116 checks from the country club, all signed by Lucas, for a total of $60,381 that she was not entitled to. Some allegedly included inflated
reimbursement for expenses that Clark claimed she had paid out of her own pockets, but could not be verified because all of the receipts for the club had mysteriously disappeared from the club before McCarthy began his investigation. The thefts took place between January 2017 and July 2018, when she and Lucas left the club.
Chester County First Assistant District Attorney Michael Noone said that the investigation into the thefts at the club is ongoing. Only Crosson and Clark have thus far been charged.
“This defendant used her job at a country club to steal over $60,000. The stolen money from the
club was her own personal piggy bank to finance a lifestyle beyond her means.,” Noone said in a statement, in which he praised McCarthy’s work investigating the thefts. “This is another reminder for businesses, organizations, and individuals to remain vigilant about their finances. Sadly, people often betray trust to feed their greed.”
The investigation began in May 2018, when Officer Curtis Ponds and McCarthy were assigned to the case by Police Chief James Fetterman after he had received information about a possible theft from the club in Schuylkill, just west of Valley Forge National Historical Park.
According to its website, the club was founded
in 1915, “the year Woodrow Wilson served his first term as president, World War I was underway, the Phillies won their first pennant, and Alexander Graham Bell talked to Thomas Watson in the first telephone call from New York to San Francisco.”
It boasts a 9-hole course designed by Hugh Wilson, the early 20th Century golf course architect who also designed the stately Merion Golf Club in Ardmore. “Our club survived the Great Depression and so many big challenges over the last 100 years,” the website states. “Not many clubs reach this age because too many of these challenges were insurmountable for them to survive.”