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Martin T. Holtet, 50, of 235 S. 19th St., is accused of defrauding the company of $227,000 in delivery fees and $98,000 in printing expenses.
Holtet was arrested Tuesday and made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Madison in the afternoon.
According to the criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Holtet delivered papers for the New York Times from 2002 to April 2008.
Holtet was paid for each paper delivered in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
From 2007 to early 2008, the number of subscribers in the La Crosse area jumped from 65 daily and 103 Sunday to 2,781 daily and 2,818 for Sunday papers.
Nearly all of the new subscriptions were submitted on the paper’s Web site with a request to be billed later.
The Times began shipping the papers and sent invoices to the new subscribers, often to multiple names at the same address. When many of the bills began coming back as undeliverable and others went unpaid, the newspaper cancelled more than 3,000 subscriptions without receiving any complaints from subscribers.
When told of the cancellation, Holtet did not seem upset and said it would not affect his workload, a company official told investigators.
Holtet blamed a subcontractor who delivers the papers and said he had little control over the account and merely passed the payments on to that person, the complaint stated.
Federal investigators later learned a recycling bin outside Holtet’s home regularly would be filled with old papers, many times still wrapped in bundles.
Holtet was released Tuesday and ordered to appear in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Sept. 9.
Dan Springer can be reached at (608) 791-8269 or dspringer@lacrossetribune.com.
2centsworth wrote on Aug 9, 2008 7:48 AM: