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Police hit dead end in case of $100,000 Lakewood community center theft

Lakeland police say they've hit a dead end in their search for nearly a hundred thousand dollars that went missing from a local community center.
More than $100,000 disappeared at the Simpson Park Community Center in Lakeland.

Case closed but not yet solved.

Lakeland police say they’ve hit a dead end in their search for nearly $100,000 that went missing from a local community center.

“Something’s not right,” said park visitor Christopher Cain.

Cain and others who bring their children to Lakeland’s Simpson Park Community Center don’t just want answers -- they want someone to be held accountable.

“Something’s got to fall. Something’s going to happen,” said Cain. “Somebody’s got to know something.”

A recent audit by the city’s finance department found $90,000 in cash missing from Simpson Park’s rec fees, along with another $27,000 in checks and money orders, all of it over a five-year period.

“That’s a lot of money,” said a woman visiting the rec center Tuesday. “I could do a lot of things with $90,000.”

“I mean It’s like three years’ worth of money that’s just – gone,” said Lakeland police spokesman Gary Gross.

Gross says several new policies have since been put in place, but there had been an embarrassing lack of accountability at the rec center, making hard to figure out which workers had their hands on the money.

“Numerous people had access to the office,” said Gross. “The safe is unlocked. Money was not in a secure area. It just went on and on. It was a nightmare.”

With so many people potentially involved and virtually no paper trail, police say they’ve hit a dead end.

They even subpoenaed the bank records of former employees, but couldn’t find any deposits that synced up with the missing cash.

No question the money is gone, “but we just can’t charge anybody criminally,” said Gross. “There wasn’t enough there to say we can make a criminal charge based on this.”

Since the investigation started, police say two workers have quit and another was fired but is appealing the decision.

Neighbors urge police not to give up.

“I hope they do the right thing. That’s all know,” said park visitor Robert McCrimon.

Lakeland PD says it would be happy to jump-start the case if they get any new leads. So, they’re asking anybody out there with any information about where all that money went to give them a call.

“There’s more leads. There’s more information,” said Cain. “There’s never a dead end.”

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