A former Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office employee facing 17 counts of felony embezzlement placed classified ads in newspapers to sell multiple firearms, three of which are directly connected to a public corruption investigation.
The unsealed case file against former Montezuma County Undersheriff Robin Cronk reveals that a Colorado Bureau of Investigations agent had questions involving an Armalite Sniper AR-30 rifle, a Remington VTR .308 caliber rifle and a Kimber .45-caliber handgun, all reportedly owned by the defendant.
Records from the Cortez Journal show that Cronk placed multiple classified ads in the newspaper from August 2010 through March 2013 in an attempt to sell each weapon.
He placed three separate ads in the Journal to sell the Remington rifle in 2011, first for $700 before dropping the price to $600; multiple ads in the Journal, Mancos Times and Dolores Star for the sniper rifle in March 2013; and one ad in the Journal to sell the handgun for $500 in 2010.
Unsealed last week, records in Cronk’s case file reveal that District Attorney Will Furse and the Montezuma County Board of Commissioners both requested the state inquiry April 10. Eight days later, CBI agent Randy Watts interviewed Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Detective Ted Meador.
According to unsealed documents, alarm bells started sounding for Meador in March 2011, when he and Cronk, his former supervisor, went to the sheriff’s office shooting range.
There, Meador said he was “surprised” to see Cronk was carrying a Remington .308-caliber bolt-action rifle, the same brand, make, model and caliber that the sheriff’s office had purchased for Meador’s use on the sniper team.
Cronk was not a member of that unit.
Court records show that Cronk used his sheriff’s office-issued credit card to add a hydrographic coating (a graphic imaging process) to the weapon.
Northwest Hydro Print in Washington billed taxpayers $527.60 for the gunsmithing services via Cronk’s sheriff’s department credit card.
The charges against Cronk, who was arrested July 17 about four weeks after resigning, stem from his alleged abuse of both a Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office credit card and checking account along with a sheriff’s office line of credit to pay for personal gunsmithing services, vehicle maintenance, holsters, generators, gun components, ammunition and firearms during a 26-month span starting in February 2011.
The 18-count grand jury indictment handed down last month alleges an “ongoing pattern” of public corruption by Cronk, revealing his personal items charged to taxpayers totaled $7,415.36.
The indictment includes 17 felony embezzlement charges and a lone charge of misdemeanor first-degree official misconduct, representative of a pattern of abuse.
Cronk is currently free on a $1,500 bond.
