FARGO, N.D. — The wife of a man who has been indicted in a murder-for-hire scheme that originated in the North Dakota oil patch is facing criminal charges for an alleged scam involving oilfield trucks.
According to a federal indictment unsealed Thursday, Sarah Creveling is charged with four counts, including conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering. Creveling and her husband, James Henrikson, previously were named in a civil lawsuit accusing them of defrauding investors in their trucking company, Blackstone LLC.
Court documents do not list an attorney for Creveling and a phone number for her could not be found. Federal prosecutors declined to comment.
Henrikson was indicted a year ago on murder-for-hire charges in the deaths of Doug Carlile and Kristopher “K.C.” Clarke, two former associates in North Dakota. The federal case is being tried in Washington state, where Carlile was killed.
Creveling and a co-conspirator, who is not named in the indictment, are accused of promising investors a 12.5 percent return on their investment for buying trucks and trailers. The defendants allegedly told the investors that the trucks were destroyed or damaged and had them sign a release for sale of the scrap, which allowed what appeared to be a lawful transfer of the trucks to another company.
Creveling and a co-conspirator diverted or embezzled more than $1.7 million from investor-formed corporations and used it to buy personal property from January 2011 to February 2014, court documents say. The indictment also includes a forfeiture allegation asking the defendants to turn over 320 acres of mineral rights in Dunn County, property in Watford City and more than $114,000 in cash.
Creveling’s initial appearance and arraignment is scheduled for Sept. 21 in Bismarck.
Carlile, 63, was shot in the kitchen of his house in an upscale Spokane neighborhood in December 2014. Clarke, 30, was last seen in early 2012 at Blackstone LLC; his body has never been found.
Henrikson told investigators that Carlile owed him nearly $1.9 million for their dealings in Kingdom Dynamics, an oil development firm. The indictment against Henrikson also alleges that he conspired to kill three other people.
Henrikson is currently in custody at the Spokane County Jail, where staffers foiled his escape attempt last month after spotting a long trail of knotted bed sheets hanging from the window of the cell.
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