{"id":1316109,"date":"2019-10-25T18:30:40","date_gmt":"2019-10-26T00:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/?p=990133"},"modified":"2019-10-25T18:30:40","modified_gmt":"2019-10-26T00:30:40","slug":"ranch-embezzlement-trial-skirts-scandal-involving-waffle-house-owner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/ranch-embezzlement-trial-skirts-scandal-involving-waffle-house-owner\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranch embezzlement trial skirts scandal involving Waffle House owner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Bear Wallow Ranch is located on Canyon Creek Road just west of Glenwood Springs.<\/strong>
Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent |<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Waffle House chairman Joe Rogers testified against his former ranch managers Zane and Charla Farris this week, explaining how he discovered an alleged scheme that allowed them to purchase more than $1 million worth of property using ill-gotten funds.<\/p>\n

But on Friday, Defense attorney Andrew Ho, representing Charla Farris, asked Rogers a number of questions regarding motivation and tactics related to selling the ranch \u2013 and why he secretly recorded the Farrises.<\/p>\n

Ho asked about an unrelated episode where Rogers was a plaintiff in a civil lawsuit and district attorneys brought charges against the same defendant in the matter.<\/p>\n

The case began in mid-2012, Rogers said under cross-examination, around the time he put the Bear Wallow Ranch up for sale. Ho asked if an unnamed person wrote to Rogers around July 2012 \u201cdemanding $13 million to resolve an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rogers agreed that case began in 2012, but did not testify
\nto a dollar amount.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve had some experience with
\npeople secretly recording you?\u201d Ho asked. Rogers agreed that he had.<\/p>\n

Ho noted several times that he was
\n\u201cnot looking to get into the details.\u201d<\/p>\n

While not specifically named as the case in question, in 2012 attorneys for Rogers\u2019 former housekeeper Mye Brindle wrote to Rogers encouraging him to pay $12 million to avoid media exposure and potential criminal charges related to sexual harassment allegations, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brindle had secretly recorded a sexual encounter with her then-boss.<\/p>\n

Rogers filed a civil suit against Brindle and her attorneys, and the three were also indicted by prosecutors in Georgia. The three were found not guilty<\/a> of unlawful surveillance in an April 2018 trial, and the civil case was settled<\/a> in August 2019.<\/p>\n

Ho asked Rogers during the Farris trial whether he had
\nexperience getting prosecutors to bring charges against people he sued civilly.<\/p>\n

District attorney Ben Sollars
\nobjected to that line of questioning, and Judge Denise Lynch told Ho to move
\non.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tactics of what happened in
\nthat lawsuit is not relevant,\u201d Lynch said.<\/p>\n

Roger\u2019s testimony took nearly five days of the trial, with much of that time spent listening to nearly 6 hours of recordings Rogers made of conversations between him and the Farrises.<\/p>\n

Rogers confronted the Farrises in
\nJuly 2016 about suspicious transactions, and recorded those discussions.<\/p>\n

Rogers legally made the recording without the Farris\u2019 knowledge under Colorado\u2019s one-party consent law.<\/p>\n

\u201cI object to the tape. It is not authentic, it is cherry-picked and it is incomplete,\u201d Kathy Goudy, Zane Farris\u2019 attorney, said.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the first tape,
\nRogers told the Farrises they had two options. If they could work out how much
\nmoney the Farris\u2019 inappropriately received, he would seek repayment. But Rogers
\nsaid if that failed, he would file a civil lawsuit and take the information to
\ninvestigators, who might bring criminal charges.<\/p>\n

Rogers testified that criminal proceedings may not recoup all the money the Farrises allegedly stole from him, but a civil case, where the burden of proof is less, might yield the total he lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t get what I paid for. In fact, I got just the opposite. I got taken advantage of,\u201d Rogers told the Farrises in the first recording.<\/p>\n

In subsequent recordings, Rogers confronted the Farrises with a host of issues that his wife and bookkeeper, Fran Rogers, considered suspicious or fraudulent.<\/p>\n

The Farrises admitted on tape that they used some ranch funds for personal goods.<\/p>\n

When Rogers questioned how the Farrises bought property in 2012 and 2013, totaling by his count around $1.3 million, the pair maintained they paid for the property with their savings and a large gift from an uncle.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou came up with a lot of cash,\u201d
\nRogers remarked.<\/p>\n

Some of the fraud, Rogers said, was related to his paying expenses while the Farrises sold the goods.<\/p>\n

On hay, for example, Rogers testified that Bear Wallow paid for fertilizer, but Zane sold the hay.<\/p>\n

 \u201cI got the expense, they got the profit,\u201d
\nRogers said.<\/p>\n

During Ho\u2019s cross-examination, he questioned Rogers about using the Farrises as \u201cscapegoats\u201d to avoid IRS scrutiny for avoiding taxes.<\/p>\n

Bear Wallow was set up as an s corp,
\nalso known as a pass-through business, meaning the ranch\u2019s profit and losses
\nwere reflected on Roger\u2019s tax returns.<\/p>\n

One year, Bear Wallow ranch bought
\nZane a truck as a bonus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe agreement was that if he left
\nthe ranch, it would be his truck,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n

Rogers denied that the truck bonus was done to avoid paying payroll taxes.<\/p>\n

tphippen@postindependent.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bear Wallow Ranch is located on Canyon Creek Road just west of Glenwood Springs.Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent | Waffle House chairman Joe Rogers testified against his former ranch managers Zane and Charla Farris this week, explaining how he discovered an alleged scheme that allowed them to purchase more than $1 million worth of property […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 16:14:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}