The True Victim of the Petco Scam Is Youth Sports

One of the ironies of the fraud that Martin Rebollo and Noly Ilarde pleaded guilty to running at Petco Park and Snapdragon Stadium is that technically the victims are the companies that paid them, Delaware North and Aztec Shops, respectively.  

Rebollo and Ilarde admitted that they took advantage of a program that allows nonprofits to bring their volunteers to work concession stands in exchange for roughly 10 percent of the money those stands bring in during an event.  

Delaware North, the company that runs concessions for the Padres at Petco Park, paid Rebollo and Ilarde’s fake nonprofit Chula Vista Fast Pitch $3,489,231 over seven years until August 2023, when we revealed that Chula Vista Fast Pitch didn’t exist. Aztec Shops, at Snapdragon Stadium, paid Chula Vista Fast Pitch $262,248.47 from October 2022 to August 2023.  

But Delaware North and Aztec Shops are not victims. That $3.75 million filled in an important number for us and allowed us to do some real math. The deal Delaware North and Aztec Shops had with nonprofits was that they would work the concession stands and take roughly 10 percent of sales according to the plea deals. 

At Petco alone that means Chula Vista Fast Pitch brought in about $35 million in revenue. We don’t know exactly how much the Padres get in their arrangement with Delaware North, but most concession contracts pay out the first 50 percent of revenue to the team. That means the Padres got somewhere in the ballpark of $17.5 million from the Chula Vista Fast Pitch stands.  

Concessionaires like Delaware North get the other 50 percent – out of which they pay food and employee costs, as well as make the 10 percent “donation” to nonprofits.   

That’s money the Padres and Delaware North made without having to pay workers minimum wage. And they avoided minimum wage because they were supposedly giving the work to volunteers and sending a few million dollars to support youth softball in Chula Vista.  

Except they didn’t, of course. It would have been the biggest news in the youth softball world if it had. If a league in San Diego was collecting millions of dollars, it would have changed everything.  

As someone who has given a lot (perhaps too much) of my time to youth softball, that $3.75 million is a staggering amount of money. I help run one of the largest youth softball leagues in Southern California, Peninsula Youth Softball Association, and $3.75 million would pay for 10 years of our operations. It would pay for much needed improvements to fields, equipment and membership fees. It could pay for professional clinics and individual instruction for every kid who plays softball in South Bay for a decade.  

At its peak, Chula Vista Fast Pitch was running about 24 of the roughly 90 stands at Petco Park. Rebollo and Ilarde admitted paying their “volunteers” $50, or higher if they were managers, per day. They had their foot in the door before 2020, but it was the pandemic that supercharged their operation. Their magic youth softball league was able to provide labor at Petco Park when labor was hard to find. And when Snapdragon Stadium opened, there was the softball league, ready to run stands.  

Running a youth sports league is a difficult, unforgiving job that volunteers do without pay. It’s not small effort to muster volunteers to work a concession stand even just one night.  

Yet Rebollo and Ilarde were there for every event, every night, the plea says. Somehow it never occurred to Delaware North, the Padres, SDSU or Aztec Shops that something fishy was going on. A couple of guys volunteering to run a softball league were able to solve the stadiums’ labor challenges day in and day out? 

Delaware North feels badly about it all.   

“We share the disappointment and frustration that funds intended to benefit youth sports in Chula Vista were instead misappropriated by individuals who have now admitted criminal wrongdoing,” said Charlie Roberts, the company’s director of public relations, in a written statement.  

The $35 million no doubt helped them get over their disappointment and frustration. The Padres, for their part, only cared that Delaware North fixed the problem. Now they’re good too.  

“The implementation of enhanced oversight measures and annual verification protocols will help ensure that similar issues do not occur at Petco Park in the future, and that funds generated through concession programs are directed exclusively toward benefiting the greater San Diego community,” the Padres’ senior vice president of communications, Craig Hughner, said in a written statement. 

Protocols and measures and enhanced oversight is great for the future. But the Padres and Delaware North avoided having to pay workers because they were supposedly giving millions to help South Bay kids play softball.  

Before scammers took the name, Chula Vista Fast Pitch used to exist. It was a youth softball league. I know the founders; their daughter played with mine and we still see them at the fields occasionally. I’m not surprised they had to shut it down, it’s a grind.  

Uniforms, field permits, equipment, field maintenance, umpires, etc. — all of the things it takes to run a league are very expensive. And now with travel clubs, private coaching, far-away tournaments and specialized gear, private equity has gotten deep into youth sports. Wealthier families and talented kids are finding all kinds of reasons to leave their communities.  

Those of us trying to keep communities together – to ensure everyone gets a chance to play and to ward off the sharks of profit as long as possible — are swimming against the tide.   

An investment of $3.75 million over seven years into local softball would have had immeasurable, long-term positive effects on a youth sports community in Chula Vista. Thousands of young girls would have had opportunities they maybe can’t get now.  

As part of his plea, Rebello has agreed to pay the Internal Revenue Service almost $540,000 and the Social Security Administration more than $71,000.  

Youth sports will get nothing. The other victims, Delaware North, the Padres and Aztec Shops may have to tap into the tens of millions they collected to implement their new protocols.  

The post The True Victim of the Petco Scam Is Youth Sports appeared first on Voice of San Diego.