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He had inside track to cash
Wednesday, September 19, 2001 By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
If you're going to steal money, there are few better positions from which to do it than running a company that supplies automated teller machines.
Unless the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service find out about it.
Barry J. Chesla and his partners in Tri-State Armored Services of New Jersey lived high for a while on the millions they stole from banks, living in big houses and driving luxury cars.
Now they're all headed to jail.
Yesterday in federal court, Chesla, 42, a former principal investor in Tri-State, admitted his role in a series of schemes in which he stole some $3.7 million and used it to snap up real estate, including a $532,000 beachfront home in New Jersey he shared with his wife, Amy.
Chesla, a Westmoreland County native, appeared before U.S. District Judge Robert Cindrich to plead guilty to money laundering and tax evasion. He'll be sentenced Dec. 7.
For more than three years starting in 1996, Chesla pilfered millions meant for ATMs, according to the FBI and the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS.
His ex-partners, William Mottin of Sewell, N.J., the former CEO of Tri-State, and former vice-president Daniel Feuker of Atlantic City, have both pleaded guilty in New Jersey.
Tri-State, based in Hammonton, ceased operations in March and declared bankruptcy the next day, according to the FBI. The company had offices in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and supplied cash for 3,000 ATM machines on the East Coast. The payment was wired to the company, which then picked up cash from banks, savings associations and credit unions, and trucked it by armored car to replenish ATMs.
According to civil forfeiture complaints, Chesla and his wife used the cash to write cashier's checks to cover part of the cost of the 10 properties they bought for $1.9 million.
Chesla, a former security guard, worked for a New Jersey bank until 1996, when he returned to run the Ligonier office of Executive Cash Services Inc., a New Jersey-based firm.
Tri-State was formed after the buyout of Executive Cash Services in 1997. The government plans to take Chesla's properties and use them to pay the banks.
In addition to the vacation home in New Jersey, he owned a $425,000 mobile home park in Hempfield, a $125,000 townhouse in Unity, land in Ligonier and Fairfield, the Cheslas' $100,000 home in Ligonier Township, rental property in Ligonier Township, Latrobe and Blairsville and the Tri-State offices.
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