Former county employee charged with felony theft

SANDPOINT — A former Bonner County employee is accused of exploiting his knowledge of payment procedures and weak password protection to swipe fuel using a county expense account at a Priest River filling station.

John James Moler was arrested Tuesday on a charge of grand theft. Judge Barbara Buchanan sustained Moler’s $10,000 bail on Wednesday and appointed a public defender to represent him, court records show.

A preliminary hearing in the case is pending in the magistrate division of 1st District Court.

Charging papers said Moler improperly charged gas on a county account during a nine-month period that ended this month.

The amount of money improperly charged to the county is still being determined, although charges attributed to Moler for the month of October alone exceeded the $1,000 statutory threshold for a felony theft charge.

Bonner County Public Works officials noticed the suspicious charges at Mac’s on Highway 57 this fall, according to a Priest River Police Department investigation.

Video footage from surveillance equipment was used to identify two vehicles that were filled up using a driver identification number and a very rudimentary personal identification number, police reports said. One vehicle was registered to Moler, while another was registered to an Oregon man described in court records as the ex-boyfriend of Moler’s former girlfriend.

Moler, 33, gained access to the driver number and PIN because he was employed by the Noxious Weed Department in 2006, the report said. The employee currently assigned the driver number and PIN was questioned and documents verified that he made his fuel purchases at another station in town.

Moler initially denied knowledge of the scheme, but allegedly admitted in a police interview that he had been periodically filling up his pickup truck for about nine months. He also admitted pumping off-road diesel fuel in order to heat his former girlfriend’s home, the report said.

The ex-girlfriend, a 30-year-old Priest River woman, denied knowing that fuel was being stolen, according to the report. She suggested that Moler shared details of the scheme with her ex-boyfriend in Longview, Ore., because they got along with one another despite the circumstances.

Priest River Police and Bonner County officials continue to investigate the matter, according to court records.