A man in March pleaded guilty to two charges related to a dispute about expensive mountain bikes that received widespread publicity after the Park City Police Department last fall arranged a sting in Old Town.
Stuart Nachlas pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted theft, class A misdemeanors, in connection with the case. Judge Robert Hilder is scheduled to sentence Nachlas on May 3. Class A misdemeanors are punishable by one year in jail and a $2,500 fine.
Nachlas, who is 39 years old, pleaded guilty to greatly reduced charges from those that the Summit County Attorney’s Office originally filed. Last September, just after the sting, prosecutors filed a theft charge against Nachlas. The original charge was a second-degree felony, punishable by a prison sentence of between 1 and 15 years and a $10,000 fine upon conviction.
Prosecutors in early March filed redone charging documents against Nachlas that changed the counts from the second-degree felony to the class A misdemeanors. He pleaded guilty on the day the redone charging documents were filed, according to the 3rd District Court.
The attorney who represented Nachlas declined to comment. The Park Record was unable to contact Nachlas. The original charging document indicated his last known address was in Old Town, but the more recent one lists his address as unknown.
The charging documents indicate the value of each of the bicycles was between approximately $1,000 and $5,000. Cannondale manufactured the bicycles. The police believed as many as six bicycles and a frame were initially involved.
In a prepared statement released to the media after the sting and in interviews at the time, the police put the value of the bicycles in a range between $20,000 and $30,000. Prosecutors at that time, though, valued them at approximately $12,000. One of the investigators, Detective Bob deBotelho, said after the sting the bikes were not “Kmart specials.”
Paul Christensen, the Summit County prosecutor who brought the charges against Nachlas, acknowledged in an interview there were competing stories about whether the bicycles were given to Nachlas as payment for work he did during an annual Cannondale show at the Marriott in Prospector.
Investigators said Nachlas was hired to perform recycling services during the Cannondale event. The police initially claimed he took the bikes while he was working.
“There was a question about whether or not he was entitled to them,” Christensen said.
The Police Department said Nachlas put the bicycles up for sale on the KSL television Web site for between $2,000 and $2,600 each. Somebody purchased one of them, took it to a Cannondale dealer for assembly and learned that the model had not been released yet, the police said. A Cannondale representative in Utah and then the police were contacted.
Police officers arranged a sting to purchase what investigators said was a prototype model one morning outside the Park City Library and Education Center. The police sent officers in unmarked cars to observe Nachlas from his house to the library. The police said an officer posed as a buyer and the other officers arrested Nachlas afterward.