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A Utah County businessman was more ashamed of his drug addiction than his million-dollar frauds, his attorney told a 3rd District judge Monday.
That's why it took so long for the "good Mormon" to admit he had a drug addiction for the past six years while he was defrauding friends and companies, attorney Rebecca Skordas said during the sentencing hearing for Alan Dean McKee in 3rd District Court.
Judge Vernice Trease acknowledged the admission, but said McKee, 57, of Benjamin, created "elaborate links and intricacies" in carrying out the frauds. Trease also cited his "unabashed use of people around him to engage in fraud" and sentenced McKee to two concurrent terms of 1 to 15 years in prison.
McKee pleaded guilty last month to one count each of second-degree felony engaging in a pattern of illegal activity and theft. Four other charges were dismissed as part of a plea bargain.
McKee's pattern of unlawful activity charge stems from his involvement in a scam from 2012 to 2015, when he duped companies and business owners out of about $1.26 million by pretending to be LDS officials soliciting funds for a railroad project and industrial park on the church's land in Utah County.
He also took about $750,000 from a friend, businessman Chet Olsen, on the pretense McKee was selling farm and industrial equipment from bankrupt companies, though he had no such arrangement.
Former Utah County Commissioner Gary Jay Anderson, 69, of Springville, faces similar charges for allegedly aiding in McKee's scheme. Anderson asserts he also was a victim of McKee, and his case remains pending.
Skordas said McKee became addicted to prescription pain medication and that when he couldn't obtain more prescriptions, he turned to buying street drugs.
McKee is a white, middle-class LDS businessman who was prominent in the community and for whom "drugs are something other people do," Skordas said. It was only when McKee was jailed and went through withdrawal that he admitted that he had a drug problem, she added.
"That's something, let me be frank, that a good Mormon doesn't do," Skordas said in asking that her client receive probation or a short jail sentence.
Olsen, the only victim who testified at the hearing, said McKee befriended him only to steal money from the family business, all the while maintaining the appearance of a successful businessman.
"It was all a lie," Olsen said. "You were not impressing anyone. In fact, you lost everything as a result."
Trease also cited McKee's desire for social standing.
"He also needed to maintain a certain status in the community," the judge said, "and those things led to where he is today."
McKee told the court that he accepted responsibility for his actions and was "embarrassed and ashamed."
"I am mortified by what I have done," he said.
Witnesses at a June preliminary hearing testified that McKee impersonated church officials, including Gary Stevenson, now a Mormon apostle but then the presiding bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and made up excuses when the railroad project was delayed and equipment wasn't delivered.
Employees of the LDS Church's land-management corporation acknowledged at a preliminary hearing that they had discussed a rail service like McKee had proposed, which would reach land the church owned in southern Utah County. But the LDS officials said the proposal stalled in 2013 as McKee had not followed through with contacts or concrete plans.
Trease also ordered McKee to pay restitution.
As part of his sentence, McKee also will be added to the Utah White Collar Crime Registry for 10 years, court documents state.