Mail Tribune
GRANTS PASS, Ore. — The vice president of a defunct Grants Pass helicopter company was motivated by “pure greed” to lie about the carrying capacities of the firms’ helicopters, including an overloaded one that crashed at a Northern California fire in 2008, killing nine people, prosecutors say.
A government sentencing memorandum says Steven Metheny not only falsified documents for Carson Helicopters to gain Forest Service contracts worth up to $51.7 million, he also supplied a similarly falsified helicopter to the Forest Service as a replacement for the one that crashed Aug. 5, 2008, on the Iron 44 fire.
Seven of the nine killed were Southern Oregon firefighters in what was the deadliest crash of its kind in U.S. wildfire-fighting history.
The memorandum, which details how Metheny tried to scuttle the investigation into the crash and stole from his own company, sets out the government’s argument for Metheny to be sentenced to more than 15 1/2 years in prison for his guilty plea in the case.
“His fraudulent conduct was the result of pure greed that eventually placed the lives of numerous pilots and firefighters in extreme danger,” according to the memorandum written by Assistant U.S. Attorney Byron Chatfield.
Metheny’s attorneys have not filed a response to the memorandum. In court on Nov. 24, however, his attorney said that Metheny’s plea to one count each of filing a false statement and of conspiracy to defraud the Forest Service does not constitute admission that Metheny’s crimes contributed to the crash.
Metheny was set to be sentenced April 6, but it has since been rescheduled for June 15.
Co-defendent Levi Phillips, who was to be sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Medford, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and has cooperated in the government’s case against Metheny. His sentencing was rescheduled for June 16.
The crash occurred on a nearly 6,000-foot-high mountaintop near Weaverville, Calif., while the Sikorsky S-61N helicopter was ferrying out firefighters battling the Iron 44 fire in the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.
A National Transportation Safety Board investigation showed the helicopter weighed more than 19,000 pounds when pilots tried to take off from a mountaintop clearing. If Forest Service guidelines had been followed, investigators said, the weight shouldn’t have exceeded 15,840 pounds.
It concluded in 2010 that Carson’s deliberate understatement of the weight of its helicopter and lapses in safety oversight caused the fatal crash.
Phillips was the company’s director of maintenance, reporting directly to Metheny.
A 25-page indictment against the two men says that roughly between March and October 2008, Metheny and Phillips submitted bid proposals on behalf of Carson Helicopters that contained information the two knew was false.
The bid proposals contained falsified weight and balance charts and falsely altered performance charts that were submitted so the Forest Service could determine whether the helicopters met minimum contract specifications, court documents claim.
Metheny knowingly distributed the false information to pilots and in helicopter flight manuals for use in the field.
The falsified charts were then used by pilots, unaware of the false nature of the charts, in performing firefighting flight operations, including calculating the helicopter’s maximum payload capacity during firefighting operations, thereby endangering the safety of the helicopters in flight, court documents state.
“To put it bluntly, Metheny knew that the falsified charts put firefighters and pilots in harm’s way,” Chatfield wrote in his memorandum.
“Pilots have to trust the accuracy of their charts with their life,” Chatfield wrote. “Pilots are trained that by staying within the parameters established by the charts, their aircraft would perform as presented.”
Those who died in the crash were check pilot Jim Ramage, 63, Redding, Calif.; command pilot Roark Schwanenberg, 54, Lostine; firefighter David Steele, 19, Ashland; firefighter Shawn Blazer, 30, Medford; firefighter Scott Charlson, 25, Phoenix; firefighter Matthew Hammer, 23, Grants Pass; firefighter Edrik Gomez, 19, Ashland; firefighter Bryan Rich, 29, Medford; and firefighter Steven “Caleb” Renno, 21, Cave Junction. Four others were injured.
Metheny’s sentence memorandum advised a sentence ranging from 188 months to 235 months in federal prison, and prosecutors in the sentencing memorandum recommended the lower end of the range.
The recommended range of sentence would have been lower had the calculations not taken into account the $51.7 million potential worth of the firefighting contract verses the $18.8 million the Forest Service paid Carson before canceling it.
It also took into account whether Metheny consciously and recklessly risked death or serious bodily injuries in falsifying those charts.
The sentencing memorandum also details how Metheny was stealing from his own company.
He used Carson funds to buy jewelry and other personal items for his wife and himself and to renovate their residence, the memorandum states. He also sold Carson helicopter parts and allegedly stole helicopter parts and eventually returned them but tried to divert suspicion toward a rival, “revealing his self-centered and vindictive nature,” the memorandum states.
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