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A Utah County businessman who is already facing fraud charges was charged again Thursday for similar crimes.
Prosecutors say that since Alan Dean McKee has been out on $25,000 bail for charges filed in February, he has continued to defraud others. After filing new communications fraud and theft charges against McKee on Thursday, they asked that he be arrested and held in the Salt Lake County Jail without bail.
"It is clear a pending felony case has not deterred [McKee] from committing new criminal acts," prosecutors wrote in charging documents. "He must be incarcerated to avoid causing the public further financial harm."
A judge ordered the no-bail warrant on Thursday, according to court records. McKee is expected in court Friday for his initial appearance on the new charges.
In the latest case, McKee is accused of trying to sell pieces of railroad line that were located on a stretch of property he did not own. The businessman told two different entities that he owned the Utah County property where the track was located, according to court records, though the Elberta land actually belongs to the Union Pacific Railroad.
The alleged crimes were uncovered after a Union Pacific Railroad police officer spotted a work crew removing railroad track from the property. The workers told police that they were instructed to remove the track by McKee, court records state. The financial loss to the railroad company is estimated at between $180,000 and $240,000.
Prosecutors say these crimes were "remarkably similar" to crimes McKee is already charged with in connection with a scheme meant to defraud a construction company.
In that case, prosecutors say McKee and former Utah County Commissioner Gary Jay Anderson, 68, impersonated LDS Church officials from 2011 to 2015 to entice investors in what they said was a plan to set up a rail line and industrial park on the church's land in Elberta.
Employees of the LDS Church's land management corporation acknowledged that they had discussed a rail service McKee had proposed, which would reach land the church owned in southern Utah County. McKee had been introduced to the church corporation's officials by Utah County commissioners, including Anderson, and McKee said he also had connections to potential users of the property, investigators wrote.
But those officials said the proposal stalled in 2013 as McKee had not followed through with contacts or any concrete plans, investigators wrote.
The construction company lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in preparing and engineering for the proposed rail line, according to court records. And others were swindled out of nearly $1 million after McKee claimed he was a "preferred buyer" of the church's surplus farm equipment and could get discounted rates, court records allege.
McKee and Anderson were each charged in February in 3rd District Court with three counts of communications fraud and one count of engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity. They are scheduled to be in court Friday on that case.
Anderson, who had served on the commission for many years, left office at the end of 2014.