Oct 6, 2016 3 min read

A Waynesburg man is accused by federal investigators of defrauding a small, family-owned natural gas company of “hundreds of thousands of dollars” during the five years he worked as the company’s operations manager.

Kevin C. Conklin, 54, of 2540 Smith Creek Road, defrauded Aleppo-based Mountain Energy Ltd. while serving as its day-to-day operations manager between January 2008 and December 2012, according to a seven-count federal grand jury indictment handed down Tuesday in Pittsburgh.

Conklin managed Mountain Energy’s finances and oversaw the company’s books and records, according to the indictment. He signed all but a few of the checks issued by Mountain Energy from 2008 through 2012.

Conklin perpetrated the scheme by issuing checks drawn on Mountain Energy’s bank account for unauthorized payments to himself as well as for payments to others for personal expenses, the indictment said. The specific amount of money Conklin allegedly fraudulently obtained through his scheme is not cited in the indictment, which states only that the amount totaled “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Among the personal expenses paid with company funds, the indictment alleged, were mortgage payments for his house, car payments and payments for furniture, credit card bills, college tuition for his children and an engagement ring for his son.

A few of the larger payments included a $6,216.78 payment made in March 2008 for kitchen improvements at his home; $7,894.70 in March 2010 for his son’s white gold, diamond engagement ring; and $8,771.87 in March 2011 for diamond jewelry.

To disguise the fraudulent payments, Conklin allegedly falsified entries in the company’s financial database and in August 2010, completed a wire transfer of $210,173 from an account of an entity named in the indictment only as “PMS” in Virginia to a Mountain Energy account.

Conklin also concealed from Mountain Energy’s tax preparer and from the Internal Revenue Service the expenditure of Mountain Energy’s money to pay for his personal expenses, and as a result, understating his true income, the indictment said.

Conklin filed an income tax return for himself and his wife for 2009 listing taxable income of $113,963, the indictment said, knowing his taxable income for that year substantially exceeded that amount.

For the three subsequent years, the indictment claims Conklin failed to file his income tax returns by the April deadlines. The indictment alleges, however, that Conklin’s taxable income for 2011, for example, was at least $385,000.

Conklin was indicted on charges of wire fraud, mail fraud, impeding and obstructing the Internal Revenue Laws and income tax evasion.

He could not be reached Thursday for comment. The name of his attorney is not listed on court documents.

A spokesman for Mountain Energy also could not be reached Thursday. In the last several years, Mountain Energy has been in the process of discontinuing all residential natural gas services to customers in the Aleppo area.

The company has stated in documents filed with the state Public Utility Commission the reason it planned to abandon those residential services is because the gas wells it has relied on to provide natural gas to customers were likely to be damaged by nearby longwall mining or were old and experiencing production declines.