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Manager of Middletown Mall admits to bankruptcy and tax fraud

Dietrich S. Fansler, manager of Pin Oak Properties, admitted to bankruptcy fraud and tax fraud, U.S. Attorney Bill Powell announced. Fansler, of Morgantown, is the managing member of Pin Oak Properties LLC, which operated Middletown Mall in Fairmont. Fansler, 59, pleaded guilty to one count of fraudulent concealment of bankruptcy estate assets and one count of willful failure to pay over tax. Fansler filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June 2017. Between June 2017 and January 2018, Fansler collected rent from the tenants of the mall and was required to deposit that money ...

PHS teacher wins appreciation award, money for classroom

KINGWOOD — A “glowing recommendation” from a parent won Preston High teacher Caralea Warnick the 2019 Dino Colombo Law Firm Teacher Appreciation Award. On Tuesday, attorney Jon Godwin, of Colombo Law, presented Warnick with a $200 gift card to use to buy supplies for her classroom. ...

Plasma drive for PANDAS all Oct. in Clarksburg

Debbie Nelson would sincerely love it if you rolled up your sleeve next month in Clarksburg. The act of rolling up one’s sleeve is what saved her son’s emotional health. He started coming out of it on the same day after receiving an injection. After six torturous years, that’s all she needed to know. It went back to the winter he was in second grade. She doesn’t say the name of her son, who is now recovered and attending college, out of respect for his privacy. He was battling a sore throat, and she didn’t think all that much about it as she bundled him up on ...

County looks at subdivision regulations

There’s a saying about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure. That saying, Monongalia County Planning Director Andrew Gast-Bray explained, gets to the heart of why the county needs subdivision regulations. He said results of completely unregulated development are all over the county, primarily in the form of tiny farm roads serving major developments and uncontrolled water runoff. “To put it simply, we want good development. We don’t want bad development because then we all end up fixing that and it costs the taxpayers a lot of money,” Gast-Bray said. Subdivision ...

Lawyer, bank dispute missing $212,500

The 83-year-old aunt of a Morgantown businessman is fighting a court order to pay a $212,500 settlement with United Bank after the original wire transfer was stolen by a scammer. The money was sent after United Bank and Betty Parmer agreed to the payment to cover attorney costs for a previous case over a $2.5 million defaulted loan, which Parmer lost, according to court documents. Parmer took that loan after she was fraudulently induced to buy the assets of Secure US, duped into signing over the company management to her nephew, Mitch Brozik, through MB Security, and denied access to ...

Energy efficiency jobs increase in W.Va.

West Virginia is outpacing the nation and all but one of its neighbors in job growth in the energy efficiency field. But in terms of actual numbers of jobs, it lags far behind. West Virginia’s energy efficiency jobs grew by 4.9% from 2017 to 2018. Of its five neighbors, only Pennsylvania ...