Ok, he's been convicted by the courts, but it sounds like a crock.
Waste of taxpayers money when such pissant disputes are made the subject of a criminal investigation.
Believe me, its an all too common story with sporting clubs and community organisations.
Faction A hires somebody to do a job, Faction B doesn't like it and tries to get him sacked, it all ends in tears and somebody screams "fraud."
It's not as though he outright stole money, or paid for hookers, he paid for travel expenses which he undoubtedly believed he was entitled to.

I honestly don't think Police should even get involved in shit like this. If they contend he owed them money let them do what anyone else does and sue him.

End of the day, what has been achieved?
Trial has clogged up the courts, probably cost $00k's of money all told,
and in the end he has been ordered to repay the debt.
Ie exactly what they could have achieved with a debt-collector.

And keep in mind that in many such cases there is no order for compensation.

How about we devote police and court resources to catching and punishing actual criminals?

As I said, he's been convicted by the courts. So yes, that stands, he's guilty and a convicted criminal.

What else has actually been achieved??
He's been told to repay the $6,500, but that could have been pursued by other means.
What do you reckon this cost the taxpayer? In Police time, prosecutors time, court costs, probably paying Legal Aid for Rucker.???

And in a perfect world, where the police have infinite time to investigate every single crime, then ok.
But fact is if Rucker had stolen a $6,500 car, or done a B&E, or assaulted somebody, likely he would never had been caught.

And I come back to my original point.
The shenanigans that go on in some of these organisations are incredible. And the police really should stay out of it, and let them clean up their own mess.
Fact is he was obviously given a credit card which he had authority to use. What for?
Was he given a contract clearly stating precisely what he could and could not pay for??
It's extremely common in these types of situations, for these organisations to hire somebody like Rucker on the basis of "well we can only pay you a salary of $X, but we'll give you a credit card and you can spend $Y a month on "expenses".

If he had a contract/anything which made the expense claiming ambiguous, surely the court wouldn't have convicted him with even a suspended sentence. AD, you're talking with limited information on the matter. If it was a non-issue, I'm sure it would've been resolved earlier and easier, or the sentencing would've been very mild. The article clearly said he spent and then went incommunicado. There was no suggestion he had good reason for that.

And I'm sure the club endeavoured to get their money back. Why would they prefer it go on this long if there were an easier road?

I'm not suggesting it was high crime, but then neither was the penalty.

The shenanigans that go on in some of these organisations are incredible. And the police really should stay out of it, and let them clean up their own mess.

If you read the article/s properly it states that a matter of fraud for some 20k+ was thrown out for a lack of evidence. So all these posts about ambiguous nature of contract...there it is right there.

Low life scum DOG!

ok