A woman who admitted to stealing about $40,000 from a local construction company will serve time in prison.
Janette M. Klapel, 34, of Rock Springs, recently appeared in the Third District Court of Judge Nena James at a change of plea and sentencing hearing to 31 counts of felony forgery charges and four counts of felony theft charges.
In exchange for Klapel’s guilty plea to three felony forgery charges and two felony theft charges, all of the other felony charges were dismissed.
Klapel was given a 3-to-10 year prison sentence for one theft and two forgery charges to be served in the Wyoming Women’s Center, with credit given for 55 days served. She was also placed on 10 years supervised probation for the other theft charge and 7 years supervised probation on the other felony charge. These probationary terms are to run consecutive of one another, but concurrent with the prison term.
Once Klapel is released from prison and placed on parole, she will have to pay $39,844 to No Bull Construction and then to Whisler Chevrolet. If she fails to pay the restitution or adhere to the other terms of her parole probation, she could be sent back to prison.
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 forged signatures and used 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 used credit cards and debit cards to purchase items from Amazon.com and Verizon Wireless.
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