The president of a local nonprofit organization was arrested this week on embezzlement charges, authorities said.
Andrew Christian Meyers, 39, of Pahrump is alleged to have made several personal unauthorized withdrawals from the Nye Gold Seekers bank account, totaling more than $10,000, according to the organization.
Nye County sheriff’s deputies located and arrested Meyers on Wednesday of this week.
He is being held on $5,000 bail, the sheriff’s office announced this week. He remained in the jail Thursday.
The organization’s current president, Bonnie Johnson, said that Meyers became president of the gold seekers organization last December, after volunteering as a member of the group’s board for roughly three months.
“He became president because we have volunteers on the board and he volunteered to be the president,” she said. “On Sept. 9, we asked him to resign as president, because there were certain issues that we were having with him. If he did not resign, we were going to take it before the membership to see if we could have him voted out as president.”
Johnson said that the organization learned about the missing money on Sept. 26 and contacted the sheriff’s office.
“We were all very angry and at that point, we contacted the sheriff’s department,” Johnson said. “We also contacted a lawyer, so now, we have a civil suit against him, aside from the criminal case.”
“I am just glad that we are at the point where we can say that he has been arrested,” Johnson said. “This has been a long process for us, and we are looking forward to this being resolved.”
She said the group was looking to recoup its funds and that the group was left with a zero balance its bank account.
“We are very fiscally conservative in our club,” Johnson said. “There are certain things as a volunteer on the board that we do not do. One of them is that we do not get reimbursed for fuel or our time, or anything like that. He felt that as president, he should be able to get reimbursed for certain items…”
As a result, Johnson said she and the other members just want to continue on with the club’s day-to-day activities.
“This has only affected us financially,” she said. “We still have our outings, we still have our meetings and we can still go out and pan for gold. There’s about 120 members in our organization at present. A lot of them are snowbirds. Most of our members live in Pahrump and some live in Las Vegas. We are having a fundraiser in December so we are carrying on with what we have to do each day.”
According to its mission statement, Nye Gold Seekers is a tax-exempt 501 (c) (3) membership organization dedicated to preserving the history of mining and with the knowledge and surroundings necessary to teach certain mining-related techniques and skill sets to its club members.
The teachings are conducted both in a classroom and on the Nye Gold Seekers Club mining claim in the Johnnie Mining District in Southern Nevada.
Additionally, the heart of the Nye Gold Seekers organization is the teaching of mining and mine safety to its members, and the preservation and protection of the environment.
Anyone with information pertaining to this case is urged to contact the Nye County Sheriff’s Office at 775-751-7000 or by emailing ncso_detectives@co.nye.nv.us, attention Detective James Brainard.
Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. Follow @sharrispvt on Twitter.