SALT LAKE CITY — A man charged with defrauding a Utah company out of tens of thousands of dollars was arrested in a tiny Nevada town on Sunday, police said.

Mark Neuhaus, 60, was found by officers from the Douglas County Sheriff's Office at a home in Zephyr Cove, Nevada. He was arrested on an outstanding arrest warrant issued by the Utah Attorney General's Office.

Neuhaus, listed as a Sausalito, California, resident in Utah court records, was laying low in Nevada as a fugitive from several felony fraud charges, said Douglas County Sheriff's Sgt. Pat Brooks. Neuhaus was charged in Utah's 3rd District Court in February with two counts of communications fraud, two counts of theft and four counts of money laundering, all second-degree felonies.

In May 2012, Neuhaus allegedly accepted a payment of $73,000 from Utah Crossing, a Cedar Hills-based company that planned to construct a bridge across Utah Lake from Saratoga Springs to Orem. Neuhaus also received a payment of $10,000 in February 2013 from Leon Harward, owner of Utah Crossing, according to charging documents.

Neuhaus allegedly promised Harward he would use the funds to bankroll Utah Crossing with a $5.3 million loan facilitated by two of his Wyoming-based businesses. Harward told investigators he believed he was depositing those payments, which he had borrowed from another Utah business owner, to the appropriate financial accounts associated with Neuhaus' companies.

Neuhaus told Harward he would secure the multi-million dollar loan within 120 days of the initial deposit, charging documents state. For much of 2013, Harward reportedly contacted Neuhaus several times about receiving a refund of his deposits, to no avail.

Instead, Neuhaus allegedly spent more than $16,000 of that deposit and more than $8,000 of the $10,000 payment on personal expenses and travel.

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In 2009, Neuhaus and other executives for Universal Express Inc., were ordered to pay a combined total of $21.9 million restitution in an unrelated federal securities fraud case.

"Mr. Harward was asked if Neuhaus had told him of the problems Neuhaus had with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or about any lawsuits Neuhaus was involved in, or the the fact that Neughause had been convicted of wire fraud. Mr. Harward said that Neuhaus never told him about any of those problems," charging documents state.

Email: blockhart@deseretnews.com

Twitter: benlockhartnews

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