In April 2018, the Cottonwood Old Town Association Treasurer Traci Ann Koelzer reportedly skipped town after the group’s outgoing president, Marat Shkandin, asked for the group’s last 12 months of bank statements to give to the new president, Brenda Clouston, owner of Colt Grille.
Shkandin filed a police report alleging that Koelzer had withdrawn close to $20,000 from the OTA’s funds without permission.
The Cottonwood police named Koelzer as their lead suspect in the theft, but she disappeared. The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office put her police report in its annual Catch 22 program hoping the ongoing news coverage would eventually lead to her arrest.
This past week, the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Taskforce arrested Traci Koelzer in Oakland County, Michigan, after receiving a tip about Koelzer’s whereabouts.
Koelzer was then extradited to Yavapai County Detention Facility in Camp Verde.
“Traci is currently in custody at the Detention Facility and is being held on charges of Fraudulent Schemes and Artifices and Theft which are both Class 2 Felonies,” the Cottonwood Police Department wrote in a press release. “The bond amount on these charges is $50,000, cash only. She is also being held on a probation violation charge which is unrelated to the above mentioned case.”
According to the CPD, the total amount that Koelzer is alleged to have embezzled and stolen by the time she left is over $100,000.
