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Jason Nils Carlson

The fate of thousands of dollars’ worth of felled logs led to felony charges against a Minnesota man accused of fleecing the man he first hired to take down the trees.

Jason Nils Carlson, 43, is scheduled to make his first appearance Oct. 12 in Pierce County Circuit Court on one count of felony theft and one count of removal or damage to encumbered property.

The charges stemmed from incidents between April 20 and May 23 in the town of River Falls, where Carlson hired another man to harvest trees from a property at W7964 810th Ave.

According to a criminal complaint filed in the case, the Blaine, Minn., resident hired Roland Dent to remove trees from property owned by Carlson’s mother and late father in a deal where the men agreed to split the proceeds from the sale of the logs.

The trees were felled on April 20 and Dent cut Carlson a check for $7,000 on April 29, according to the complaint. The check represented prepayment for Carlson’s share of the logs; he cashed the check in Dent’s presence, the complaint states.

Dent told authorities the logs were there when he checked on them May 15, but were gone when he returned to the site on May 23.

According to the complaint, the logs were taken away in the interim by a third party, Schmitt Timber. The complaint states Schmitt Timber hauled off the logs on May 19 at the direction of Carlson.

Carlson allegedly told company representative Jeff Schmitt that Dent had been paid for the logs. The complaint states Schmitt Timber -- at Carlson’s direction -- paid $4,519 to Carlson’s mother for the logs. The mother confirmed with Pierce County deputies later in May that her son had someone come to remove the logs.

Dent told authorities the value of the missing logs was $9,700.

Meanwhile, deputies received a complaint from a neighbor of the Carlson property that logs removed from there had actually been taken from his land without his permission. The complaint states Dent later paid the neighbor $2,000 for those logs, which had been inadvertently taken.

The complaint states the Carlson property had been in foreclosure since February 2013 -- terms of which prohibited waste on the property.

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