Woman accused of stealing $3.6M

COEUR d’ALENE — A 47-year-old Osburn woman who is accused of stealing millions of dollars from a Rathdrum construction company was indicted by a federal grand jury and will be arraigned next week in Coeur d’Alene’s U.S. District Court.

According to the indictment records, Trina M. Welch will enter a plea on March 11 to 341 counts of wire fraud, which carries up to 20 years in prison per charge.

Hired on in 2012 as the chief accountant for Kasco of Idaho, LLC and Kasco Communications, Welch is accused of stealing $3.6 million from the company over the course of six years.

Welch allegedly acquired this money by writing 341 fraudulent company checks to herself and then depositing them into several different bank accounts of her own.

While the indictment only details 15 of these transactions, each of the 341 checks written count as an individual charge of wire fraud in the case.

Kasco owner Keith Sims said that serious money problems began to arise at his company roughly a year after Welch was hired.

“It kind of started in about 2014 when we started having a money crunch at Kasco,” Sims said. “We tried figuring it out, tightening our belts and Trina always said ‘our overhead is too high’ or ‘this is too high,’ and I drank the Kool-Aid because I trusted her explicitly.”

According to financial documents, Welch started small and transferred approximately $43,000 from Kasco in 2013. A year later, she allegedly transferred $77,000 from Kasco Communications. In 2015, the amount was more than $565,000 again from Kasco. In 2016, it was more than $1 million. 2017’s amount was nearly $1 million, 2018 was roughly $575,000 and 2019 was $345,000.

“She was my most trusted person at Kasco, hands down,” he said, “because she was the person that took care of my money.”

It wasn’t until June 24, 2019, that Sims said he discovered what she had been doing.

That day, his employee who handles billing made him aware of a possible mistake where they may have paid a bill twice. After checking the books and verifying vendors, he said it was clear that money was missing.

“Welch attempted to conceal her embezzlement by creating false entries in Kasco’s software accounting program to make it look like the money she stole had actually been used to pay legitimate business expenses,” according to the indictment.

A day later, Sims said that he went to the police and filed a report. Once the case had made its way to the Kootenai County Prosecutor’s Office, the decision was made to hand the case off to the Federal Bureau of Investigation due to the allegedly high amount stolen.

Kasco’s books were audited by both the FBI and his insurance company — both of which discovered a trail of money disappearing.

It was on July 3, 2019, that Sims said he fired Welch. The weeklong waiting period was due to the FBI advising him to get his preliminary work done first.

Sims explained that much of the money taken has been tied up in property and items such as homes and vehicles.

“Definitively, there are seven properties that are affected,” he said.

Prosecutors said Welch purchased a Post Falls house with the money, as well as four properties in the Silver Valley, including three in Osburn and one in Smelterville. She also allegedly bought two riverfront properties in St. Regis, Mont.

If the government cannot pinpoint which assets were purchased with embezzled cash, it is allowed to substitute.

“The government will seek forfeiture of substitute assets, or any other property of the defendant’s” up to the value that was alleged to have been stolen, according to the indictment.

Sims added that since the indictment was filed and the situation went public, he has heard from friends of Trina and her husband, Norman, saying that the couple would foot the bill on numerous vacations and casino trips.

“I’ve had people call me and say ‘holy shit, I was on that trip with them and we actually paid her back after she initially rented everything,’” Sims said.

In addition to a 20-year penalty for each count, Welch could also be required to pay a $250,000 fine if she’s convicted, and be placed on supervised release for three years once she’s released from prison.

With all that has occurred, Sims hopes that justice is served and that others step forward.

“Will I be whole on this? There’s no way. Will I cherish the fact there’s a chance she’ll be sitting in prison when significant things happen in her life? That’s what will fix this for me,” he said. “I would hope that anybody that was affected by this, either directly or indirectly, looks into getting compensated for their damages or losses.”

Trina Welch declined the opportunity to comment on the allegations when contacted by the News-Press and referred us to her attorney. Her attorney, listed on the indictment as Mark Ellingsen, could not be reached for comment.

Judge Ronald E. Bush will preside over Welch’s 1 p.m. arraignment at the federal courthouse, 6450 N. Mineral Drive.