We’ve tried, but we just can’t take it anymore!

220 groups nationwide are facing losses after an online payment company Count Me In Corp stopped handing over dues and other funds it was collecting.  Most of the groups are are out of money are School, Little Leagues, Campfire Clubs... The missing payments, which Washington-based Count Me In Corp. acknowledged Tuesday total $5 million.  Terry Drayton, Count Me In's founder and chief executive, expressed regret Tuesday for his clients' anxiety but said he was in discussions with three possible investors to raise funds to pay back their money.  He acknowledged that the company made mistakes but said all the missing funds went toward operating costs -- primarily the computer software used by the company's clients -- and that none of it was stolen.  "How did we get here? We made some errors with the lack of financial oversight," Drayton said in a telephone interview. "At the end of the day this is my responsibility. I'm the CEO and my job is to fix it."  About 600 school and sporting groups across the country use the firm's software to process their online registration fees and other payments, Drayton said.  In the nearly eight years that the firm has been in business, he said, it has collected about $175 million and disbursed $170 million.  The company withholds a fee of about $3 per transaction and is supposed to return the rest to its clients. But Drayton acknowledged that the accounts had been combined and that funds owed to certain clients were instead used to pay company salaries and other amounts owed to third parties. Drayton said he became aware of the problem about two years ago, but said it took him until May to go over nearly eight years of transactions to figure out precisely how much was owed to whom -- information he would need to show a potential buyer.

No criminal charges have been filed. But lawsuits have been filed in several states, and the Connecticut attorney general on Tuesday urged parents to stop making payments through Count Me In's website -- a feature the firm said it had disabled two weeks ago on its own.

Can you imagine having to tell your children "Sorry I know that we paid our dues but there will be no sports this year because we got screwed by a shady company that couldn't get their math right.  Poor kids.