In September last year, Lacombe’s Cory Dunn stood in front of more than 100 people gathered together to raise money for 12-year-old Devin Funck, whose arm was bitten off by an alligator weeks earlier. With a tear in his eye and microphone in hand, he pledged to help raise money to pay the family’s mounting hospital bills.

On Tuesday Sheriff Jack Strain said Dunn, who managed the account for Funck, embezzled about $5,000 of those donations.

“In a tearful confession,” said Strain, Dunn, 34, of 25146 U.S. Highway 190 in Lacombe, confessed to stealing the money and said he used it to travel to Arizona, where his own daughter, Alissa, is preparing to undergo heart surgery. He was arrested and charged with felony theft of more than $500, Strain said. Dunn was released Monday in lieu of a $5,000 bond, ironically about the same amount he allegedly stole.

Suspicions of Dunn’s misdealings were revealed late last year when the Funck family noticed about $20,000 of the $51,000 fund were labeled as expenditures, an amount the family believe was “grossly underestimated,” Strain said.

“That’s when we believe things really began to go wrong,” Strain said.

On Nov. 24, less than a month after the fundraiser, the Funck family approached Sheriff’s Office investigators with a hunch Dunn was skimming from the donations.

“They certainly are a private family and don’t enjoy the attention this case has gotten,” Strain said. “But when they suspected the public had been cheated, they wanted” justice.

Investigators launched an inquiry and obtained various financial records of Dunn’s accounts. Nearly $5,000 in questionable checks were traced back to Dunn, Strain said.

Dunn allegedly skirted security measures by authorizing a friend to withdraw money, while meanwhile blocking the Funcks from withdrawing any money, Strain said. Once, when the family went to the bank, bank employees said they were not authorized to access the account.

The friend, who authorities believe had “no intent” or knowledge of the fraud but withdrew money by signing off on the account, was not charged with any crimes, Strain said.

In September, at the fundraiser, Dunn remained jovial and upbeat, saying he hoped to restore some sort of normalcy to the Funck family.

“I can’t imagine what it was like,” Dunn said at the time. “If that would have happened to me, at 34, I probably would have froze and drowned. He’s had his moments of frustration obviously, but putting this event together, to have everyone here tell him how brave and great he is, it helps him emotionally.”

Then he talked about his own daughter.

“I’ve been there,” he said. “I’ve gotten that phone call. I know how his parents felt. I know what its like to be helpless.”

Strain said he feels sorry for Dunn, but he still broke the law.

He had his “own horrible, horrible story and just wasn’t thinking correctly,” Strain said. “He said he didn’t realize how quickly it got away from him. He didn’t know how much he spent.

“Regardless of his intent, he spent thousands of dollars for something other than what those people donated the money for,” Strain said.

Funck’s tragedy occurred in July last year when while swimming in Crystal Lake, a gravel pit near Kingspoint subdivision, a 500-pound alligator nicknamed “Big Ben” by locals attacked the boy. Funck managed to break free and swim ashore where Sheriff’s Office deputies and other first responders got to him and rushed him to a hospital.

Even though the alligator was caught killed and sliced open to find the remains of his arm, it was too late.

Doctors were unable to re-attach it.