'Tolly,' victim of bad budgeting decisions, aims to prove good intent

DON TOLLEFSON hopped on and off the witness stand in between calling character witnesses to testify at his charity-fraud trial in Bucks County Common Pleas Court.

After the state rested its case on Monday, "Tolly," 62, took the stand yesterday to start his defense, calling a range of witnesses - from a man who named Tollefson his son's godfather to a kid he took on trips who called him "Uncle Don."

Longtime radio host Bill Werndl said he met Tollefson in 1975 when the sportscaster started working at 6ABC in Philadelphia.

"I've been doing this for 49 years," Werndl's voice boomed in the courtroom when questioned by Tollefson.

"We had a strong working relationship, day in and day out. You were like a brother to me."

Tollefson has described his Winning Ways charity (which never earned federal tax-exempt status) as an "anti-boredom, anti-violence" program. It once raised close to $1 million, but by the spring of 2012, Winning Ways' bank account was more than $50,000 in the red.

Because he once had an in with the Philadelphia Eagles, Tollefson said, he would be given sideline game tickets and sports packages that included hotel and airfare. But prosecutors allege that Tollefson fleeced more than $342,000 from his donors without delivering on his promises.

One trip that put Tollefson's charity into the fiscal dump was when he took seven Winning Ways kids to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Toward the end of his testimony yesterday, Tollefson was rattling off line-item expenditures from his charity bank account in an attempt to show that the money was well-spent in London. But much of the time, Tollefson said, he overspent - budgeting anticipated money that never came.

"Full restitution became a goal of mine," he said. "My mission has been to make people whole."

On Monday, Tollefson told the jury that toward the end of 2013, he began rummaging through his basement for things to sell. He brought in several items as evidence of what he was unable to sell after his arrest, including a Moses Malone figurine, a Tony Dungy autographed football and a Jamie Moyer bobblehead figurine.