Ron Welch
Muskingum County Prosecutor
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Zanesville man to be imprisoned for embezzlement
Early Monday morning William Arter appeared in front of Judge Mark Fleegle in the Muskingum County Common Pleas Court to plead guilty to telecommunications fraud, a felony of the third degree. Arter will serve thirty (30) months in prison for his offense.
Arter was caught after a lengthy and thorough investigation conducted by Zanesville Police Department Detective Bryan Ruff. The case started following the widespread hail damage from a storm event in 2022. Arter, a manager for the Dutro’s dealership body shop, was granted additional supervisory authority due to the large influx of customers.
The investigation showed that Arter used that access to engage in numerous fraudulent transactions.
Arter offered customers cash discounts, then altered computer accounting data to account for inaccuracies. As the investigation proceeded, it was discovered that Arter also altered employee working hours to pay other employees and his family members for hours they did not work. Additionally, Arter stole shop equipment, money owed to his employer from scrapping broken parts and misused a company gas card.
Finally, when Arter was caught and fired, he orchestrated a ‘party’ at a local restaurant where he invited all the shop staff in the hopes that the shop would be left empty so he could gain access to his former office. When none of the employees appeared, he recruited his sons to sneak into the office and hide nearly $11,000 in cash, attempting to make it seem like the money had been merely misplaced.
“Embezzlement cases are extremely labor intensive for detectives, and are fairly complicated to prosecute,” according to assistant prosecuting attorney John Litle who handled the case. “Normally, embezzlers are sophisticated in the way they commit their crimes, and they tend to use a business’s internal practices to deceive employers and investigators. Fortunately, Detective Bryan Ruff, who has handled several other complex fraud cases, was able to uncover the extent of the fraud and make the schemes understandable to everyone involved.”
The investigation resulted in the Defendant pleading guilty to a prosecutor’s bill of information and accepting a term of thirty-months imprisonment for his fraud.
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