Former swim coach Ken Stopkotte was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 21 months in prison on Friday for using counterfeit money at a minor league baseball game in April.
Stopkotte admitted to bringing over 200 counterfeit $20 bills with him to a Dayton Dragons game on April 18, 2018, making numerous purchases with the fake bills including his ticket, food, beverage and other concessions. He ended up using 41 of the bills, receiving genuine currency back on his purchases.
Once approached by investigators at the game, the 53-year-old tried to hide an additional 54 bills under a stadium refrigerator. Officials also found $166 worth of genuine currency in the sole of his shoe. 136 more bills were later found hidden under the cover of his boat at his Indiana residence, and he plead guilty in May.
The counterfeit bills were found to be purchased by Stopkotte on the ‘dark web’, and his iPhone history revealed numerous searches regarding counterfeiting.
Had he not entered a plea agreement, Stopkotte would’ve been facing up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
This isn’t Stopkotte’s first run in with the law. Back in 2014 he was charged and sentenced to three years in prison for stealing $180,000 in donations to Nashville-area churches. Seeing as he was still on probation from that sentence, Judge Thomas M. Rose ordered that Stopkotte must serve an additional nine months for violating the terms of that supervised release.
You can read the full release from the U.S. Department of Justice here.
Stopkotte was also given a 2-year ban on USA Swimming membership in 2010 after counting 31 disqualified swims as legal and entering them in the SWIMS database. Later that year he was also charged with theft for financial irregularities relating to his role as the head coach at both the Fishers High School and the Fishers Area Swimming Tigers. Those charges were later dropped and he filed a defamation lawsuit against Hamliton Southeastern School Corporation.
Oh dear………….