A former Chelsea High School football coach withdrew thousands of dollars from the team’s bank account in the dead of night near a strip club, a racetrack, a casino, and a downtown Boston sports bar, a Suffolk County prosecutor said today during opening statements in the trial of JAMES ATKINS (D.O.B. 7/7/65).

“This case is about arrogance,” said Assistant District Attorney Edward Beagan, chief of the trial team that prosecutes fraud, corruption, and white collar crime for District Attorney Daniel F. Conley. “It’s about deceit. And it’s about the compulsive behavior of the defendant, James Atkins.”

Beagan told a Suffolk Superior Court jury that Atkins, a Chelsea Police sergeant currently suspended from duty, used his position as a head coach and president of the Chelsea High School football team to embezzle almost $10,000 from a bank account meant to support the team’s expenses – funds that had been raised in large part by the young players’ families.

“Over the course of 2005, they entrusted thousands of dollars to the defendant,” Beagan said. “Unfortunately, they didn’t ask for a receipt.”

Instead, Beagan said, Atkins would put the proceeds from raffles, concession stands, and other fundraising activities “in his pocket” and, when pressed, even told the fundraising parents that “You’re not raising enough money.”

Beagan said Atkins claimed to be purchasing expensive, professional-style coaches’ headphones for the team – “but the invoice for those headphones was sent to the school system, not to the defendant.”

Concerns first voiced by the players’ families prompted an investigation by the Chelsea Police Department and Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to Conley’s office. For his part, Atkins said that he withdrew money to reimburse himself for his own expenditures on the team’s behalf.

Beagan said investigators calculated the money Atkins contributed to the team and the amount he withdrew, learning that Atkins had overcompensated himself to the tune of more than $9,000.

“The defendant might not have kept track of that [money], but a State Police investigation did,” the prosecutor told jurors.

Beagan also detailed the locations of the various withdrawals, including a $500 withdrawal at about 1:40 a.m. on Dec. 13, 2006, from an ATM “right across the rotary from the Squire Lounge,” a Revere strip club; additional three-figure withdrawals near the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut and the Seabrook Greyhound Park dog racing track in New Hampshire within a five-day period shortly thereafter; and in Bessemer, Alabama, where Atkins’ grandmother lives, in July 2006.

Atkins also used the account’s ATM card in February 2005 to pay a $634 bar tab at the Champions Sports Bar located in Boston’s Marriott Copley Place hotel.

“These ATM withdrawals occurred in secret,” Beagan said.

In January of 2007, Atkins attended a meeting with Chelsea High School students’ parents and the school’s athletic director, Beagan said. In that meeting, Atkins agreed to repay $8,200 over a series of installments.

“No money was ever paid,” Beagan said. “Nothing on the document was ever paid.”

What Atkins did do was visit a respected community member who had made charitable donations in the past and asked for another donation. That donor gave him a check for $1,000 for the Chelsea High School football booster club – which Atkins tried to apply to his outstanding debt.

“He tried to pass off a donation as a payment,” Beagan said.

“The defendant did a great deal for Chelsea High School,” Beagan told jurors. “There’s no disputing that the defendant revitalized the football program at Chelsea High School. But more than that, the defendant was entrusted with vast amounts of cash and he violated that trust.”