A part-owner of the Baltimore Mariners indoor football team was charged with embezzling more than $1.6 million from the Laurel-based mechanical engineering firm he also partially owned.
Dwayne Wells, 50, of Potomac, was charged with wire fraud in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt.
Another of the engineering company’s owners, Charles K. Fash, was also charged with wire fraud for allegedly embezzling funds from the company.
In court documents, prosecutors said that Wells, Fash and one other person purchased the engineering company Ryco Associates in 2006.
Over three years, prosecutors said, Wells allegedly incurred more than $250,000 in unauthorized expenses with his business credit card, created several corporations through which he embezzled funds and approved more than $440,000 in payments from Ryco to himself.
The court documents said Wells allegedly used some of the funds to purchase an interest in a Baltimore restaurant and in the Baltimore Mariners football team of the American Indoor Football Association.
Wells allegedly paid $18,000 in arena expenses for the Mariners in June 2009 and over the past two years approved $109,500 in unauthorized payments to the team, which finished the 2010 season undefeated and won the league title.
Fash used Ryco funds to pay for $2,000 in Mariners expenses, according to court records.
A woman who answered the phone at Wells’ home Friday said she had no comment. The person who answered the phone at Fash’s Rockville residence also declined to comment.
According to Ryco, Wells is no longer involved in the company. The firm would not comment further.
Mariners and AIFA officials could not be reached for comment.
Wells also allegedly used the stolen funds to pay for travel and expenses at a Baltimore adult-entertainment business.
In July, according to court documents, Wells was asked in a meeting to explain the unauthorized transactions on his company credit card and the payments he had authorized.
At that meeting, Wells allegedly confessed that he had embezzled Ryco funds and was going to try to repay the company.
He also indicated in an e-mail that he was trying to sell his interests in the restaurant and football team and asked whether full restitution to the company’s third owner “would permit him to escape prosecution.”
