Area addict jailed on theft, fraud charges
By PHILIP A. HOLMES pholmes@sungazette.comAn admitted heroin addict who allegedly stole items to get cash to support his drug habit was arrested Thursday to face charges filed by three different police departments.
In one case, Jeffrey Alan Beitz, 32, of 3749 Pleasant Valley Road, Hepburn Township, burglarized a neighbor’s home and stole $2,300 worth of glassware between Feb. 26 and March 9, Old Lycoming Township police allege.
Beitz stole the glassware from the home of Donald Dangle at 3573 Pleasant Valley Road, and sold the goods to a local antique business and a local auction center, police said.
Police said Beitz was staying with Dangle’s niece and that he had been inside the home before.
“He sold the items a short time after the burglary, knowing that he would get cash to support his addition to heroin,” Patrolman Morris M. Sponhouse II said in affidavit.
The other two sets of charges were filed by the city and Muncy police departments and stem from a scheme in which Beitz allegedly made unauthorized purchases on his former employer’s account, according to court records.
City police Capt. Raymond O. Kontz III has charged Beitz with forgery, identity theft, theft and receiving stolen property.
Kontz alleges that beginning in July, while Beitz was employed as an installer by SupplySource Inc, 415 W. Third St., he forged another employee’s name on the company’s credit account when he picked up supplies at Your Building Center on Arch Street.
However, the items Beitz picked up “were not used for any company jobs, but for personal reasons,” Kontz said in a criminal complaint.
“Even after he was dismissed in October, he continued using SupplySource’s credit account, but using his own name” when he bought copper items from Your Building Center, Kontz said. The alleged actions continued until the end of January.
Kontz alleges that Beitz made a total of $2,198 in illegal purchases on his former employer’s account. “He took the copper items to a salvage business where he was given cash,” Kontz said.
Muncy police charged Beitz with a similar scheme involving the Your Building Center outlet in the borough, according to District Judge C. Roger McRae, but court papers in that case were not available Thursday night.
Beitz was first arraigned on the burglary-related charges before District Judge James H. Sortman and was then taken before McRae to be arraigned on the two other sets of charges. He was committed to the Lycoming County Prison in default of $55,000 bail.
