GREENWOOD, Ind. — A former athletic director at Greenwood Christian Academy has been arrested after police say he stole $42,000 in school funds and used it on sports gambling.

Devin M. Gray, a 31-year-old Greenwood man and the former head athletic director at GCA, was arrested Monday after a felony theft warrant was filed in Johnson County court.

The charge against Gray is the result of a months-long investigation by the Greenwood Police Department, which was first notified of the potential theft in May.

Court documents show GCA Superintendent Michael Chitty reported to GPD officers on May 5 that he suspected Gray, who was employed as GCA’s athletic director from 2020 to April 2023, had stolen thousands of dollars from the school.

According to Chitty, upon being hired Gray was given a credit card issued through Home Bank and registered to GCA. The superintendent told officers that over the past year, the card had been charged over $40,000.

When confronted about this, Gray allegedly said he had been buying Vanilla Visa gift cards “for a good cause,” court docs show. When pressed for more information, Gray told his boss the cards were being given to GCA coaches to buy stuff for their teams.

A review of the financial trail, GPD said, showed that between June 16, 2022, and Oct. 15, 2022, Gray’s card was used to buy $41,325 in gift cards from various Walmart stores. This resulted in $42,564.27 being spent in total, according to police.

However, investigators said that after speaking with GCA coaches it was determined that only $1,150 worth of gift cards had been given out.

Court documents show that a financial advisor working for GCA was able to recover Walmart receipts containing activation codes for the gift cards Gray had bought.

In total, 23 activation codes were recovered. When bank officials checked to see if any of the cards had been activated, it was determined that all of the cards had been redeemed at the online sportsbook DraftKings.

However, that was not the only money that was missing from GCA’s records. While investigating, officers were told by a GCA staffer they thought Gray was stealing concession money collected during sporting events.

“Between the dates of Aug. 22, 2022 and March 10, 2023, the GCA Middle School Athletic Director turned in $15,104.95 in gate and vending deposits,” court docs read. “During the same time frame, Gray turned in $5,833.97.”

During an interview at GPD headquarters, officers said Gray admitted to purchasing around $40,000 in gift cards. When asked how he kept track of the cards, Gray allegedly said that his methods were “sloppy” and that he kept them all unorganized in a safe.

Eventually, court docs show that Gray admitted that “it’s likely” he used the gift cards. Gray allegedly named DraftKings when asked where he would’ve spent the money, but said he had since deleted the account he used.

“I did,” docs quote him as saying. “I’m moving on from all that because I don’t want it a part of our life. I’m going to say that yes I did but I will say that because my memory is so clouded from that really hard stretch of life.

When asked around how much he had spent, Gray told officers “a good chunk of them.” When pressed for an exact number, Gray said it was “probably like $20,000” but that he was ballparking.

“I don’t want to go too high but I don’t want to go too low either,” he said.

Officers also asked Gray about the discrepancy in vending deposits. He explained that he had taken one deposit home with him and that it was subsequently stolen out of his car.

However, GPD did not buy the story and asked if he had personally taken any of the money.

“That’s another good question,” he said. “I guess it could have happened, but I’m not lying about what happened with the vehicle. I did not like to do it to the level of the gift cards, by any means taking things and using it.”

When grilled further about the missing money, Gray admitted that he had pocketed vending cash a “handful” of times but that it was not as “significant” as the gift cards and was not after every game.

Officers asked Gray if anyone else was involved in the theft, which he denied before expressing some regret.

“No, I’ll take it all,” he said. “I mean, I hated it for the school and I wish I could have resolved it somehow for the school. I always had this vision of going back to the school with this big pot of money.”

Further evidence against Gray was revealed on May 16, 2023, when the GCA School Board received an online form submission from “devin.gray15@gmail.com” in which the submitter confessed to misusing gift cards and asked to speak with the board.

Finally, GPD’s investigation into the missing funds came to a close when both DraftKings and Walmart provided video and data evidence that further incriminated Gray.

A warrant for Gray’s arrest charging him with one count of level 6 felony theft was granted in Johnson County Court on Monday. Online court records show that he was arrested on the same day and has an initial court hearing scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 11.