GRAY FOUND GUILTY OF EMBEZZLEMENT

By DEBRA HAIGHT

NILES – The two-week trial of former SMCAS executive director Tim Gray on embezzlement charges ended last week with a guilty verdict for Gray. He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 16 in Berrien County Trial Court and could face a maximum of 15 years in prison.
A jury of 11 women and one man heard testimony for two weeks from several witnesses including Gray himself. Jurors received the case in late afternoon last Tuesday and deliberated for two hours before reaching their verdict in early evening.
Gray now stands convicted of embezzlement over $50,000 and under $100,000. He embezzled money from the Southwestern Michigan Community Ambulance Service from 2009 to mid-2014 by taking excessive payments for paid time off, holiday pay, dental and vision reimbursement and short term disability.
Gray, 50, now of Clearmont, Florida, is free on bond awaiting sentencing. Neither his attorney, Michael Cronkright, nor Assistant Prosecutor Gerald Vigansky commented after the verdict although Cronkright did say that Gray would appeal the verdict.
Jurors heard testimony over nine days from a variety of witnesses including Gray himself. Among others testifying were current SMCAS Executive Director Brian Scribner, SMCAS board members William Weimer and William Marx and forensic auditor David Marshall.
Jurors ended up not being swayed by the argument Gray and Conkright made as they attempted to label all the discrepancies found in the ambulance service’s financial books as errors and mistakes.
Gray was on the witness stand for a total of two days. He claimed he never took more money than he deserved, even when presented with evidence showing him taking extra compensation beyond his regular paycheck and receiving his salary at the same time he got short term disability.
Upon questioning by Assistant Prosecutor Gerald Vigansky, Gray admitted that he lied in specific emails when he told different people that he had been “sick in bed for two weeks” in early 2013. Gray claimed that although he told at least one woman that he was sick, he was still working during that time.
“I was working while I was sick, I said I was sick in bed for two weeks because I didn’t like her,” he said.
“Now you’re saying you lied, can we trust your word?” Vigansky asked.
That was one of several incidents Vigansky raised in which he portrayed Gray as following his own set of rules and not following company policy. In another instance, Vigansky pointed out that Gray worked while on prescription pain killers even though it was against SMCAS policy.
Vigansky and defense attorney Michael Conkright clashed a number of times on the issue of missing SMCAS records. While Conkright tried to say that SMCAS had failed to provide different records from Gray’s tenure including copies of budgets and approved minutes, Vigansky said those records don’t exist anymore and blamed Gray for taking them.
“He (Conkright) made a big deal about where’s all the information,” Vigansky said. “Who was the last person who knew where it was? Tim Gray. Brian Scribner asked where different records were and Tim Gray told him they were in a filing cabinet. He also told Mr. Gray that they were getting a new auditor. After that, Brian Scribner couldn’t get into the records on the computer.”
Cronkright argued that Vigansky had not proven his case beyond a reasonable doubt and tried to poke holes in the testimony of prosecution witnesses, particularly of forensic auditor David Marshall. “What I’m trying to show is that there was no embezzlement at all,” he said. “… Mistakes are not embezzlement, there has to be an intent to defraud.”
Cronkright said there was “a significant lack of evidence” presented by Vigansky and called the disability payment question a “red herring” and a “matter of smoke and mirrors.” He blamed a lot of the discrepancies in the financial records on a former bookkeeper who was fired after making “a lot of mistakes.”
In closing arguments, Vigansky said Gray had betrayed the trust of everyone at SMCAS by taking more money from the service than he deserved to get to line his own pockets. “He sold back all the vacation and sick time he had and then some,” he said. “He embezzled and stole. He took people’s trust and betrayed it.”
Vigansky described Cronkright’s arguments as “pixie dust” and “hocus pocus.” “It’s not the fuzzy math Mr. Cronkright wants you to believe, it’s simple math,” he said. “These checks were made out to him, he endorsed them, he knew what was going into his account.”