Former Columbia City Parks and Recreation superintendent, Mark Green, has found himself at the center of a scandal after being sentenced to three years for embezzling over $240,000 from city funds. The saga began when Columbia City Mayor Ryan Daniel launched an investigation in March 2023 due to suspicious financial transactions that caught the city’s attention.
Working alongside the Whitley County Prosecutor’s Office, Indiana State Police, and the Indiana State Board of Accounts, the investigation uncovered Green’s fraudulent activities, leading to his immediate termination. Shockingly, court documents revealed that Green had gone on a spending spree with the city’s credit card, splurging approximately $246,000 on baseball cards from the ‘Sport Spot’.
In a bid to cover his tracks, Green then resorted to selling some of these ill-gotten sports memorabilia on eBay. However, his misdeeds caught up with him, and he eventually confessed to the unauthorized use of city funds for his personal collection of baseball cards. Initially facing a total of nine charges, including corrupt business influence, theft, and official misconduct, Green decided to plead guilty in April 2024 to a single count of theft under a plea agreement.
This plea deal led to the dismissal of all other charges, with Green now owing a hefty sum of $275,628 in restitution. This amount included $100,000 to a bond company and the remaining $175,628 to the city’s coffers. The sentencing of Green took place recently, with the court decreeing that he must spend the first year of his three-year sentence either behind bars or on work release, followed by two years of probation.
The scandal involving Green has shed light on the apparent lack of financial oversight within Columbia City’s Parks and Recreation Department, igniting calls for stricter controls and enhanced monitoring procedures to prevent such incidents from recurring in the future. It serves as a stark reminder of the importance of transparency and accountability in the management of public funds to preserve public trust and uphold the integrity of government institutions.
