Feds indict two Ramsey County sheriff's employees on theft charges
By Mara H. Gottfried
mgottfried@pioneerpress.comArticle Last Updated: 03/12/2008 04:37:15 PM CDT
Two Ramsey County sheriff's office employees were named in indictments unsealed today on charges of fraud, theft of funds and civil rights conspiracy after they allegedly took $6,000 from a St. Paul hotel room, according to the U.S. Attorney's office of Minnesota.
A federal grand jury handed up the indictment March 4 against Mark Naylon, 48, and Timothy Rehak, 47. Naylon was public information officer for the Ramsey County sheriff's office. Rehak had been a St. Paul police officer before he was hired last year by the sheriff's office.
According to the indictment:
On Nov. 3, 2004, a person working with the FBI contacted Rehak, then a St. Paul police officer, and told him a drug trafficker who had rented a hotel room in St.
Mark Naylon works with the Ramsey County Sheriff's office.
Paul had been arrested and was trying to recover drugs and money left by him in the hotel room.
"In fact, there was no such drug trafficker, which was a fiction created by the FBI as part of an 'integrity test' of law enforcement," the indictment said.
The person told Rehak the name of the supposed trafficker and the hotel where the drugs and money could supposedly be found.
Naylon, although "not a peace officer licensed by the state ... engaged in actions and duties of a peace officer," was working with Rehak, the indictment said. The men went to the hotel and "attempted to gain unlawful entry into the room without a search warrant," the indictment said.
After the hotel clerk refused, the men contacted a sheriff's deputy to
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apply for a search warrant. Based on information they provided, the deputy applied for and received a warrant.
Naylon and Rehak went to the room about 3:30 p.m. with the deputy. The deputy began searching the bathroom and Naylon and Rehak searched the main room.
Rehak found a bag inside the dresser, which had been left by the FBI, with $13,500 inside. While the deputy was out of sight in the bathroom, "Naylon motioned for defendant Rehak to give him some of the currency. Rehak gave Naylon
Tim Rehak of the Ramsey County Sherrif's office
$6,000 in currency, which Naylon concealed by placing the currency in his jacket pocket," the indictment said.
Immediately afterward, Naylon and Rehak alerted the deputy they had discovered a bag. When the deputy returned to the main room, Rehak "purported to begin searching the bag and pulled the remaining currency, $7,500, out from the bag," the indictment said.
Because the other deputy wasn't aware of the other money, he made an inventory receipt for $7,500.
After everyone had left the room, FBI agents went in and confirmed the full $13,500 "had actually been seized and removed from the hotel room, and not just the $7,500 indicated on the official receipt," the indictment said.
The original information Naylon and Rehak received was that drugs were in the room, but the FBI hadn't left any drugs. "Following the search warrant, the defendants became suspicious, believing it unlikely that a drug trafficker would leave a large amount of currency in an unattended hotel room," the indictment said.
After the search warrant had been completed about 5:30 p.m. and again at about 9:45 p.m., Naylon and Rehak "caused numerous official law enforcement databases to be searched for the name of the fictitious drug trafficker," the indictment said. The databases indicated there wasn't such a person, "thereby altering the defendants that the hotel room had likely been a law enforcement integrity test," the indictment said.
At about midnight, Naylon and Rehak called the deputy at home and told him an additional $6,000 had been seized.
"The defendants falsely claimed that the additional funds had been recovered in the box spring or mattress in the hotel room," the indictment said.
The next day, Naylon and Rehak gave the deputy the remaining $6,000 and the deputy changed the department copy of the inventory receipt to reflect the full $13,500 had been seized from the hotel room.
A second integrity test started on July 12, 2005. At about 1 p.m., a person working with the FBI called Rehak and told him a drug trafficker had left drugs and money is a vehicle. The person gave Rehak a description of the vehicle and a general location.
"Again, the information was a fiction created by the FBI as part of an integrity test of law enforcement, namely, defendants Rehak and Naylon," the indictment said.
At about 11 p.m., Rehak and Naylon were spotted near the target vehicle. At 11:24 p.m., St. Paul police dispatch queried the vehicle's license plate through a law enforcement database and determined it was registered to a company, rather than an individual.
Rehak and Naylon left the area early July 13 without entering the vehicle.
On July 14, about 2:30 p.m., the person contacted Rehak again and told him the target vehicle had been moved and said it contained narcotics and money. At about 4:30 p.m., Naylon approached the vehicle and wrote down the VIN number. At 5:16 p.m., the Ramsey County sheriff's office queried official databases about the vehicle and determined it had been reported stolen.
The men called in a police dog to check out the car, who didn't alert to the presence of drugs. The FBI had left money, but not drugs.
At about 8:30 p.m. Rehak arrived in the parking lot where the vehicle was. At about 8:40 p.m., he called the tipster and said, "Why would anybody store a substantial amount of dope in a stolen car parked at a hotel?" the indictment said. The tipster "assured Rehak that narcotics and currency were located in the target vehicle," the indictment said.
At about 10 p.m., when no other law enforcement officers were there, Rehak and Naylon went in the vehicle and found in the trunk a bag of money.
"At that moment, the defendants disbelieved that a drug trafficker would stash a large amount of currency inside a vehicle; the defendants both knew that they were the subject of a second integrity test, and the defendants both knew that they were under surveillance," the indictment said.
The men were seen walking a short distance from the car and talking. When they returned, they agreed to treat the indictment as having found a stolen vehicle and called another deputy to arrange a tow. The deputy inventoried all the property, including the money.
Naylon and Rehak were indicted on six counts of defrauding the citizens of Minnesota of the defendants' honest services in a wire fraud scheme, one count of theft of government funds, and one count of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of inhabitants of the state, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Naylon and Rehak are to appear in federal court Thursday morning.
If convicted, they face a maximum of 20 years on each fraud count, 10 years on the theft count and 10 years on the conspiracy count, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
