Payment program making amends
Ogg’s overhaul of restitution process is starting to pay off
Construction workers had already started mapping out fields at what was supposed to be the Texans Soccer Club new athletic complex in Cypress when Stephen Wilbur started receiving phone calls from vendors complaining that they weren’t getting paid.
Wilbur — a parent volunteer who helped the club design its new complex — made a grim discovery at the bank: an employee — emboldened by lax oversight from the club’s board of directors and executive director — had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars.
After Catherine Rosson, the club treasurer, confessed and was charged with felony theft of more than $300,000, prosecutors asked club officers whether they wanted to pursue prosecution, which promised to be difficult and unlikely to result in jail time, or whether they wanted to force her to pay restitution. Wilbur — who had replaced the former executive director — and the new board of directors decided to pursue restitution.
“If we could get some restitution, we could still provide some opportunities (to players and coaches), and the whole thing wouldn’t have been for naught,” Wilbur said.
Rosson pleaded guilty to two theft charges, was sentenced to 10 years’ probation and was ordered to pay back more than $400,000 over the next decade — money the club will use for scholarships as the athletic complex remains undeveloped.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said the case comes amid a massive overhaul of how the county handles restitution cases. For years, the county hadn’t had a systematic method to track restitution cases, Ogg said, describing the process as “an afterthought” to past administrations.
She arrived in office to a cluttered mess, with more than 2,000 checks —
many years old — that had never been paid out to victims. The uncashed checks landed in the state’s general fund.
“There was a lot to clean up,” Ogg acknowledged. “It was system failing to get money to victims.”
The process was so mismanaged that a former administrative assistant for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in 2009 was charged with stealing about $200,000 in restitution funds from the victims’ rights division.
Prosecutors implemented a new system with better accounting practices, Ogg said, including onsite check cashing, more communication with crime victims, and faster turnaround getting cash to victims.
Over the last three years, prosecutors have returned $7.4 million to crime victims, according to the DA’s office, including one case in which a man stole more than $800,000 from a local church, the Texans Soccer Club case — in which the defendant has paid back more than $90,000 so far — and a case in which an elderly woman was ripped off by a man pretending to be a roofing contractor.
“Restitution is not just symbolic, we’re not just telling people we want them to feel better, it’s actually making the person who did the act to another person repay that act,” she said. “It really does increase peoples’ confidence in the DA’s office and courts when they get paid and makes them less interested in punishing a defendant — and more interested in a wholistic result. Many still want punishment but they’re not as angry when they’re repaid.”
At the Texans Soccer Club, the thefts effectively torpedoed plans for a new stadium and the expansion they were hoping to pursue.
“It was devastating,” Wilbur recalled. “It all went away in a puff of smoke. It was not a happy day.”
The debacle forced the resignation of the past president and a new board of directors. Wilbur — who’d helped discover the wrongdoing — was selected president of the new organization. They tried to hang on for several years, but eventually joined forces with another local club soccer league called RISE Soccer.
Learning the thief would pay back some of the funds helped somewhat, he said. “But there was a sense of relief we’d reached the end of this thing,” he said.