AYSO sues former commissioner

Deirdre Newman

The American Youth Soccer Organization has filed a lawsuit against a

youth soccer leader who allegedly misappropriated more than $100,000

by spending it on his company, his landlord and tickets to a

professional soccer team match.

On June 20, AYSO filed the lawsuit with the Superior Court of

Orange County against Anthony Anish, the former commissioner of AYSO

Region 97, which is made up of Newport Beach and part of Costa Mesa.

The lawsuit accuses Anish of four main improprieties and “numerous

other instances of misappropriation, conversion, misuse and fraud.”

The lawsuit seeks general damages to collect the amount that Amish

allegedly spent for his own purposes and punitive damages to send a

message about the impropriety of Anish’s actions.

“I believe the conduct warrants the imposition of both general

damages and punitive [damages],” said Mike Wade, AYSO’s attorney.

Anish, a Costa Mesa resident, could not be reached for comment

because his phone number has been disconnected.

Anish began serving as the interim regional commissioner around

February 2001, according to the lawsuit. Nine months later, he became

the regional commissioner. His duties in this position were

collecting and maintaining AYSO funds received from things such as

registrations and fund-raising, according to the lawsuit.

AYSO officials first suspected Anish around the fall of 2002 when

they began discovering financial problems in his region such as

bounced checks, said Chris Sarris, the current regional commissioner.

“We had over $100,000 in savings, and I was hearing this from

vendors,” Saris said. “We kind of thought, ‘Well, how are we bouncing

checks?’”

Sarris began asking Anish for financial statements, but he didn’t

provide them with any, Sarris said.

In early 2003, Sarris and some other AYSO parents formed a

financial committee to examine the regions’ financial condition.

Sarris said he began finding checks made out to Anish’s corporation

and to his landlord. He also discovered that the organization’s

balance was only $19,000, and it faced debts of about $60,000.

“It was disbelief on everybody’s behalf,” Sarris said. “They

couldn’t believe that a) we didn’t have any money left, and b) we had

such incredible debt and we had vendors screaming for money that

hadn’t been paid since September.”

While the committee members were becoming aware of the financial

problems, the majority of AYSO members are only finding out about

them now that the lawsuit has become public, Sarris said.

“The hardest part was, here we have a community-based organization

that’s stealing from the community,” Sarris said.

Anish has 30 days to respond to the lawsuit, Wade said.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa and may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.