EXCLUSIVE: KESQ Confronts Former AYSO Chief Accused Of Embezzlement

LA QUINTA – A Valley woman under suspicion for embezzling $108,000 from a local youth soccer league has been hard to find. She has not been arrested, but AYSO officials tried to contact Sharon Schumaier for months, asking what she did with their money.

Now, in a News Channel 3 exclusive, we ask her the tough questions.

We found her coming out of her attorney’s office in Palm Desert. We asked her as she quickly walked to her van Wednesday, “Sharon Schumaier, did you tell the AYSO you were a convicted felon before you handled all their money?”

“No comment,” was her reply.

We asked, “Did you tell the AYSO about what happened in ’95, ’96?”

Schumaier said again, “No comment.”

When asked, “any explanation?” she closed her minivan door and drove away.

Sharon Schumaier pleaded guilty in 1995 to embezzling more than $40,000 from State Farm Insurance where she worked.

The national AYSO tells News Channel 3 it contracts with Lexis Nexis Choicepoint for their background checks. But they said the Fair Credit Reporting Act only allows searches going backseven years and it’d be too expensive for the nonprofit to do a deeper background check.

New AYSO La Quinta Commissioner Andrew Nielsen told detectives it was suspicious that Schumaier wrote dozens of checks from the AYSO account to Desert Cities Automotive, an Indio business she co-owns with her husband, Jeff Schumaier.

From 2006 to just a few months ago, it amounted to 49 checks, totaling $108,000.

A police search warrant was served on the Schumaier home last week, looking for AYSO documents. The AYSO said they tried for months to reach her at home, but failed. We found her.

“Anything to say to the parents you left behind?” we asked her as she pulled out of her home driveway.

“No comment,” she said from inside the minivan.

Her attorney, Rod Soda, would not comment on the record on behalf of his client.