Ex-Iron County GOP treasurer now faces federal fraud charges

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Blake Cozzens, ex-Iron County GOP treasurer, faces federal charges for allegedly embezzling $1.9M.
He is accused of defrauding JPMorgan Chase of $1.4 million.
Cozzens will appear in federal court on Thursday.

CEDAR CITY — The former treasurer and chairman of the Iron County Republican Party is now facing federal charges accusing him of embezzling $1.9 million and using the money, in part, to gamble.

Blake Floyd Cozzens, 35, was charged on Monday in U.S. District Court for Utah with wire fraud and bank fraud. He was originally arrested on Jan. 15 and charged two days later in state court with theft and 10 counts of unlawful dealings by a fiduciary, second-degree felonies.

Cozzens, who resigned from his GOP position in 2018, is a licensed real estate agent and broker. He is accused of embezzling $1.9 million from two accounts belonging to the Cedarbend Homeowners Association that he manages through his business, Stress Free Property Management, according to state court documents.

Starting as early as January 2020, Cozzens "engaged in a scheme to defraud others by engaging in materially false and fraudulent pretenses, deceptions, omissions of material facts, misrepresentations and promises," according to the federal charges.

Prosecutors say he did this by opening a credit union account in Cedarbend's name without permission, making unauthorized transfers of funds belonging to Cedarbend, making fraudulent deposits and embezzling prepaid rents and security deposits from tenants, the charges allege.

Cozzens is also accused of defrauding JPMorgan Chase Bank by obtaining seven cashier's checks totaling more than $1.4 million. He then "presented the cashier's checks to casinos in Las Vegas in exchange for markers, or credits, to gamble. After obtaining casino markers and gambling, (he) reported to banks that he had lost the checks, causing the banks to stop payments to the casinos," according to charging documents. "As a result of Cozzen's fraudulent conduct, JPMorgan Chase suffered a loss of $1,395,673.58."

Cozzen's father, Iron County Commissioner Paul Cozzens, went to the Iron County Jail following his son's arrest. His tense visit prompted an internal investigation conducted by the county's human resource director on Jan. 31 into whether Cozzens was seeking special treatment for his son. In February, Cozzens apologized for his actions during a commission meeting.

Blake Cozzens is scheduled to make an appearance in federal court on Thursday.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.