{"id":1316760,"date":"2019-11-15T16:53:04","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T23:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/?p=990930"},"modified":"2019-11-15T16:53:04","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T23:53:04","slug":"ranch-embezzlement-trial-in-jurys-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/ranch-embezzlement-trial-in-jurys-hands\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranch embezzlement trial in jury\u2019s hands"},"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

For nearly a month, a Glenwood Springs jury has heard arguments alleging Charles \u201cZane\u201d and Charla Farris stole up to $1 million from the Garfield County ranch they managed.<\/p>\n

The jury will begin deliberations Monday after the complex trial concluded Friday with closing arguments from defense attorneys and prosecutors.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors allege the Farrises treated Bear Wallow funds as their own and reaped the benefits.<\/p>\n

The trial included testimony from the ranch\u2019s former owner and Waffle House chairman Joe Rogers, Jr., investigators, tax experts and local ranch vendors. The Farrises did not testify.<\/p>\n

A large part of the evidence is recordings Rogers secretly made<\/a> over three days in 2016 when he confronted the Farrises for the alleged fraudulent transactions. At multiple points, both the Farrises said they were wrong to make many of the questioned transactions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said they did it. We showed you the records that prove they did it,\u201d prosecutor Ben Sollars said during closing arguments.<\/p>\n

Regarding one transaction, Charla told Rogers in the recording, \u201cYou\u2019re right, we should have not paid that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sollars pointed to a number of other times the Farrises assumed responsibility for the transactions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to them, it\u2019s all on them, and they can\u2019t blame Joe,\u201d Sollars said.<\/p>\n

The Farrises are charged with theft of between $100,000 and $1 million from the ranch, but the jury has the option to find the couple guilty stealing lower amounts.<\/p>\n

The couple is also charged with tax evasion and theft of livestock.<\/p>\n

According to the defense attorneys, the improper transactions were both outright mistakes and purchases they thought benefitted Bear Wallow.<\/p>\n

One theory of the defense is that Rogers had given permission for the Farrises to pay for certain personal items as bonuses to avoid payroll taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t about income, this isn\u2019t about W-2s. This is about a ranch that is shutting down, and about finding another way to survive. During that time Zane and Charla commingled everything,\u201d Sollars said.<\/p>\n

Andrew Ho, Charla\u2019s defense attorney, argued that there was no intent to defraud Rogers. Many improper transactions were mistakes, and the jury had a duty not to punish mistakes, Ho said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not expected to be robots. We\u2019re expected to make mistakes, and again, mistakes aren\u2019t crimes,\u201d Ho said.<\/p>\n

Ho also argued the theory that Rogers used the Farrises as scapegoats to avoid liability in a potential audit that could have, according to Ho, revealed under-the-table business practices at Bear Wallow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire prosecution in this case, the entire theory, is premised on the idea that Bear Wallow Ranch was a normal, above-board business,\u201d Ho said.<\/p>\n

Ho brought up a memo that said the ranch would pay for a truck that Zane would use, as a bonus, and another from Rogers\u2019 wife Fran Rogers, who initially discovered the Farris\u2019 suspected theft.<\/p>\n

Zane \u201cworked his butt off for the benefit of Bear Wallow\u201d and tried to save the ranch money, his defense attorney Kathy Goudy said.<\/p>\n

The Farrises \u201cbelieved their expenses were paid for by Bear Wallow\u201d as a \u201cquid-pro-quo\u201d for their hard work, Goudy said.<\/p>\n

Many of the allegedly fraudulent transactions involved the Farrises paying businesses they owned for Bear Wallow work, or paid for repairs and appliances on property the Farrises owned.<\/p>\n

Those checks were sometimes miscoded and entered in the books Charla maintained for the ranch with different amounts.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re aware of what you\u2019re doing when you\u2019re hiding things in the books,\u201d Sollars said.<\/p>\n

Sollars said it defied logic to view the miscoding of those sorts of transactions as mistakes.  <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery mistake they make benefits (the Farrises), personally. They don\u2019t ever make a mistake that benefits Bear Wallow,\u201d Sollars said.<\/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 | For nearly a month, a Glenwood Springs jury has heard arguments alleging Charles \u201cZane\u201d and Charla Farris stole up to $1 million from the Garfield County ranch they managed. The jury will begin deliberations Monday after […]<\/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-1316760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 13:06:44","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\/1316760","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=1316760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}