DAVIE, Fla. — The former interim athletics director at Nova Southeastern University was booked into the Broward County jail on Friday on charges that he defrauded the Davie school by submitting fake invoices.
John Sung was initially arrested in late November in East Providence, Rhode Island, where he had been serving as the athletics director at an all-girls Catholic high school, before being extradited to South Florida. He was fired from the school shortly after his arrest, multiple Rhode Island media outlets report.
Sung, 47, of Warwick, Rhode Island, is accused of defrauding NSU out of nearly $58,000 from October 2023 through this February. He had been appointed interim athletics director on Aug. 5, 2024.
According to a Davie Police Department report, the investigation into Sung, a former Plantation resident, began in March.
Sung, police said, had been “terminated for unrelated incidents” and NSU athletics employees were unable to find “numerous pieces of equipment” that he had supposedly purchased for the school and received reimbursements for.
Nine of the reimbursements, totalling $16,349, were to Sung’s own company, “Top Dog,” the report states. Police said some of the purported purchases were charged to Sung’s NSU credit card.
A representative from another company said it “has never done business with NSU” after being contacted by Davie police, according to the report.
Police said after Sung received reimbursements from NSU, the funds “appeared to be spent” on personal expenses, including credit card payments, shopping at Target, Publix and Amazon, auto financing, and at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood, “amongst many others.”
According to the report, a detective spoke to Sung on Oct. 16, who said “he was just trying to help the school out.”
“Initially, Sung said he made the purchases within the invoices, but (the) product was never delivered; however, Sung corrected himself and said some product was delivered, but at the time of the phone call, he did not know which ones,” a detective wrote. “When I asked Sung for an approximate amount for the invoices of product(s) which were not delivered, Sung said it was ‘roughly about whatever the severance was.’”
Sung is facing charges of obtaining property over $50,000 by fraud and grand theft. As of Friday afternoon, he was being held in the Broward Sheriff’s Office Main Jail on a $10,000 bond.
An NSU spokesperson directed Local 10 News to DPD when asked for comment on Sung’s arrest on Friday afternoon.
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