Posted Wednesday, June 26, 2019 3:00 am

A 47-year-old Quilcene wood thief has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for leading a criminal organization and trafficking $55,000 worth of high value timber from state property.

Joseph Frantz was charged with 19 counts over three cases, including leading organized crime, trafficking in stolen property, theft, malicious mischief, possession of drugs and engaging in illegal harvest of specialized forest products. He pleaded guilty to all counts on May 10.

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office began this investigation into Frantz’s criminal enterprise in June of 2018, although officers were familiar with his pattern of stealing valuable wood from past encounters with him.

“Frantz was working with or alongside at least five people we could prove and we suspect others as well,” said Derek Allen, a detective with the Sheriff’s Office. “There are still outstanding suspects that will not be named at this time due to their possible pending arrest.”

By interviewing suspects and others charged in the same theft, investigators were able to find that Frantz was organizing the crimes. That allowed the state to charge him with leading organized crime, the state’s version of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which allows leaders of a syndicate to be tried for the crimes they ordered others to do or assisted them in doing.

In his probable cause statement, Allen describes first investigating a patch of state trust lands near Snow Creek, where Frantz was observed with game cameras, creating trails with ATVs and stealing valuable cedar.

“I observed one-quarter to one-half of a cord of cedar prepared in block form,” Allen said. “I know from training and experience cedar blocks are sold to mills for the purpose of making shingles or shakes to be used as siding or roofing on homes.”

In August, Allen and Deputy Adam Newman began investigating another area they believed to be tied to Frantz’s activities, also on state timberlands, on Mt. Walker near Quilcene.

“We examined the area and discovered a large-scale timber theft consisting of both cedar and maple,” Allen said. “A large quantity of maple billets (portion of maple tree cut and ready for sale to a mill) were stacked and ready for transport out of the woods to be dried or to a mill for further processing.”

Both maple and cedar are valuable wood. Quilted and Flame maple provide the desirable wavy grain seen on the backs of high-priced guitars. Frantz’s family owns a wood store in Quilcene, called Whale Bay Woods. Their website shows that a 23 inch by 9 inch piece of quilt maple for a guitar back can cost up to $500.

His mother, Sarah Frantz, spoke at his sentencing hearing, stating that he had started off working for the business, but that drugs had caused him to take a different path.

The only way to make money from stolen processed cedar or maple is to traffic it to a third party who could either be a middle man or a mill, Allen said. Both are prohibited by state law.

At both the Snow Creek site and the Mt. Walker site, investigators found that the maple and cedar that had been stolen was processed in a way that is consistent with being sold to mills for further processing, allowing Frantz to make a criminal profit from the sales.

“We were not able to get a direct link from buyer to seller in this investigation,” Allen said. “It can be difficult under the current permit process in Washington for a buyer to know if the wood being sold was harvested legitimately under a legal permit.”

Allen said that it is also common to see permits that have been forged or altered.

Maple and cedar theft is not uncommon in Jefferson County. In January, the Sheriff’s Office caught two men stealing a 100-year-old maple from a private property near Lake Leland. But the size and sophistication of Frantz’s theft operation is larger than others, Allen said.

“This was by far the most extensive timber theft I’ve ever seen,” said Dave Richards a timber appraiser for the Department of Natural Resources, who testified in court during Frantz’s sentencing hearing. “What struck me was the methodical picking and choosing of trees.”

According to Richards, many of the trees taken were in riparian zones and wetlands, areas that are near streams and are off limits to harvesting on DNR land. Soil and vegetation in these zones protects water quality in streams, which affects wildlife and salmon habitat.

Some trees taken were 100 years or older, Richards said, and a few were over 4 feet in diameter. Not only that, but several of the ATV trails Frantz created to reach the theft sites went through wetlands and across streams.

Trail rehabilitation would cost about $4,000 between the two sites, according to DNR.

During Frantz’s sentencing hearing, his defense attorneys argued for the sentence to be set at 10 years, and that he was eligible for a drug offender sentencing alternative, or DOSA sentencing because of his drug offenses and addiction to methamphetamine.

“Drug possession and thefts go together,” said Steve McFadden, Frantz’s attorney. “There is no evidence that the profiteering in this case was making him rich.”

The state prosecuting attorney Anna Phillips argued that Frantz’s addiction was not the cause of his criminal acts.

“He’s not so drug-addicted that he can’t organize groups of people in an operation that lasted over several months,” she said. “His family had a legitimate wood business. He is a smart guy. And if he took half that energy and put it into a legitimate wood business, we wouldn’t be here today.”

Ultimately, Superior Court Judge Keith Harper decided against a DOSA sentence, and sentenced Frantz to 10 years with restitution.

“The nature of the damage done to DNR land was remarkable and extraordinary,” Harper said. “The most recent charges encompassed a very sophisticated operation. It took a certain amount of planning, energy, cooperation of other participants and organization.”

The state is asking for $65,182 in restitution charges, to be paid to DNR for the value of the timber and the restoration of the theft sites, Phillips said.