Woman pleas innocence in forgery case

A woman accused of forgery and theft of about $41,400 from a local construction company claims she’s innocent.

Janette M. Klapel, 34, of Rock Springs, recently appeared in the Third District Court of Judge Nena James at an arraignment to 31 counts of felony forgery charges and four counts of felony theft charges.

If found guilty of all 35 charges, Klapel could face a maximum sentence of 350 years in prison and a maximum fine of $350,000. A jury trial has been scheduled to take place Oct. 3.

According to court documents, Klapel, whose name was Janette Olds, started working for No Bull Construction on Sept. 10, 2013, as the company’s bookkeeper.

On Dec. 17, 2015, Janette Olds married Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Klapel. Her other aliases are Janette Lewis and Janette Grabusnik.

On Dec. 21, 2015, a Sweetwater County Sheriff’s deputy responded to No Bull Construction to speak with the company’s secretary Judy Masters and accountant Tami Goldman.

In December of 2015, the company was having problems making its payroll and it had been bouncing checks.

Goldman started assessing the financial situation of the company and began to discover several suspicious transactions against the company’s checking and credit-card accounts.

She also noticed several expenses listed as company expenses were not for the company at all.

Several company business account checks that were supposed to be used to pay legitimate business expenses were made payable to Janette Olds. Most of these checks were signed by either Stanley Masters, who is the company’s president, or Judy Masters.

However, both Stanley Masters and Judy Masters denied signing numerous checks made out to Janette Olds. Plus, the signatures on the checks didn’t match either of the Masters’ signatures.

The company’s debit cards, credit cards and other credit cards it had through the Home Depot and American Express also showed fraudulent activity.

Klapel used Quicken QuickBooks to manage the company’s finances and generate both payroll and business account checks. She used her own personal laptop to complete this work.

Deputies searched Klapel’s home and seized her computer, USB drives and documents belonging to No Bull Construction.

Among the documents seized, were photo copies of debit and business credit cards the company had.

She was not authorized to give herself cash advances from the company accounts.

Klapel is accused of forging signatures and using company credit cards and debit cards to purchase personal items. Some of these personal items included, breast augmentation surgery, expensive clothes and purse purchases and expensive dietary supplements from Dynamaxx International.

She allegedly used credit cards and debit cards to purchase items from Amazon.com and Verizon Wireless.

 

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