WORLAND – Dennis Jones, 45, a former Northern Wyoming News (NWN) employee, has been bound over to district court on three felony counts of theft that occurred during his employment at the paper.

Jones was arrested on Aug. 15, 2019. After asking for several continuances, Jones officially waived his right to a preliminary hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 18, which bound the charges over to Fifth Judicial District Court.

The three counts of felony theft state that Jones “did knowingly take or exercise unauthorized control or make an unauthorized transfer of an interest in the property of another person with the purpose of depriving the other person of the property, in an amount in excess of $1,000.” Each count has a penalty of not more than 10 years and/or a fine of up to $10,000 or both.

Count 1 is regarding alleged thefts in 2015, Count 2 for alleged thefts in 2016 and Count 3 for alleged thefts from Jan. 1, 2017 to May 31, 2018.

According to an affidavit of probable cause, Jones worked at the newspaper for several years in various capacities, including as the business manager, until April 2019.

After Jones left, changes were made to billing the vendors who sold newspapers.

According to the affidavit, in June 2019 the NWN was contacted by one of the vendors about receiving a statement from the newspaper for newspapers sold by the vendor, in addition to “the usual record sheet payable to an individual (Dennis Jones),” that the vendor had been receiving since 2015.

According to the affidavit, the vendor informed the newspaper that “all checks for newspapers sold had been paid with a check directly to Dennis Jones since January 2015.”

According to the affidavit, police acquired a search warrant for bank records at Jones’ bank, where it was discovered a total of $11,357.06 from the vendor was directly deposited into Jones’ account.

According to the affidavit, Jones told investigators that he would cash the checks and then pay the money to the paper. The Northern Wyoming News was unable to find any corresponding deposits of these payments to the NWN.

A date for his arraignment had not been set by press time.