Whitefish man gets probation for money laundering
By NICHOLAS LEDDEN / Daily Inter Lake
A Whitefish man convicted of wire fraud and money laundering has been sentenced to five years of probation.
During his sentencing hearing Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Brendon Keith Retz, 39, also was ordered to serve three months of house arrest with electronic monitoring and pay $900 in fines.
Retz, an owner of Timberland Construction LLC, pleaded guilty in June to fraudulently obtaining approximately $197,000 from various credit card companies and then laundering it through a resort owned by his parents, according to federal court documents.
Prosecutors allege Retz needed the money to keep his construction company afloat after his partnership with real estate investor Donald G. Abbey dissolved in August 2003.
Retz, then owner of Timberland Construction Inc., met Abbey after the California businessman bought Flathead Lake's Shelter Island in July 2000. In 2001, Retz and Abbey formed Timberland Construction LLC, whose partnership agreement governed construction of Abbey's Shelter Island project.
But by November 2002, Abbey became concerned about some of the payments being made by the business and asked Retz for financial documentation, according to court papers. Uncomfortable with Retz's failure to provide documentation justifying the payments, Abbey hired an accounting firm to conduct a review of Timberland Construction's finances and - upon receiving the results - decided to terminate the partnership.
Abbey reportedly stopped depositing money into the various financial institutions that held accounts to finance Timberland Construction's projects and Retz, who no longer was receiving a paycheck, experienced cash flow problems.
So in September 2003, Retz swiped his American Express and Bank of America credit cards five times through the machines at his parents' resort - the North Forty Resort between Columbia Falls and Whitefish - each time representing that a customer was purchasing lodging, according to court papers.
The credit card companies electronically transferred $197,000, minus fees, to the North Forty Resort's bank account at Glacier Bank in Whitefish, and Retz then laundered the money by depositing it into his personal bank accounts.
"IRS Criminal Investigation specializes in following the money, and in this case we followed the money through a series of fraudulent credit card transactions disguised to defraud credit card companies," said Christopher M. Sigerson, the IRS Special Agent in Charge of Montana.
The investigation onto Retz's business practices was conducted by the IRS and FBI.
Abbey, a part-time resident of Flathead County, founded the California-based real estate investment and management firm The Abbey Co. in 1990. The privately held firm's gross asset value is now approximately $1 billion. Abbey also donated the B.E.A.R., an armored vehicle, to the Kalispell Police Department in 2007.
Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com