GILLETTE (WNE) — A Campbell County man accused of stealing nearly $30,000 from Gillette Little League while he was the club’s treasurer has pleaded guilty to felony theft.

Rory Geis, 40, reached a plea agreement June 16 in which he agreed to plead guilty to felony theft. The prosecution agreed to dismiss a second count of felony theft.

In exchange for the guilty plea, the state recommends a suspended four- to six-year sentence with a 30-day split sentence to be served in jail and five years of supervised probation.

The deal also calls for Geis to pay $2,300.75 in restitution to Gillette Little League.

A former treasurer for Gillette Little League, Geis was arrested in January on two counts of felony theft for stealing $28,867 from the organization in 2019 and 2020.

On June 7, the president of Gillette Little League, Troy Stevens, and Mike Leisy, the Little League vice president, met with Geis to go over the financials. 

Geis said he made a mistake by using his card when he shouldn’t have, and he was willing to write a check for “a couple grand” to Gillette Little League. When they confronted him about the total amount (at least $30K) missing from the account, Geis went into “a panic,” Leisy said, and Geis resigned from his position, according to court documents.

Detectives looked at bank statements and Little League registrations and noticed numerous withdrawals from Geis’ card. They discovered several withdrawals from the bank account through Geis’ card in 2019 and 2020 that did not coincide with scheduled Little League events.

Detectives also looked at the Little League registration forms, which showed that $59,980 in registration fees were collected in 2020. But the amount deposited that year was $41,634, a difference of $18,346.