Ex-Dayton City Paper publisher indicted

Wanda Esken has been accused of taking thousands of dollars.

Wanda Esken faces charges that she took thousands of dollars from the Dayton City Paper, which recently closed.

A former publisher has been indicted by a grand jury on charges that she took thousands of dollars from the Dayton City Paper, which recently closed.

Wanda Esken faces three counts of grand theft and a count of forgery, according to the indictment filed Aug. 16 in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court.

Each of the three felony grand theft counts alleges that Esken took more than $7,500, but less than $150,000 from Paul Noah and his business, Dayton City Media, the parent company of the Dayton City Paper, via cash or check.

“The investigation took over four months, and in that time I realized I had two choices: one, fold the paper because there was no money, and that option actually came up in mid to late January when we had no money, or two, try to save the ship,” Noah said. “I as captain of the ship did not want to see the ship go down, and if it was going to go down, I was going to go down with it.”

Noah said his paper was thriving and he had plans to expand into Lexington, Ky. (he owns the domain name for LexingtonCityPaper.com) before financial irregularities were brought to his attention in December.

“The paper was costing me, after the crisis, between $3,000 or $4,000 a week (of personal savings) to stay alive,” he said.

Christopher W. Thompson of the Montgomery County Public Defender’s Office, Esken’s attorney in the case, said he could not comment.

A woman who answered Esken’s cell phone Tuesday hung up on this news organization without commenting.

A hearing is scheduled in the case for Oct. 1.

Noah filed a Dayton police

report on Jan. 5 alleging that Esken, his employee of about five years, “was stealing from his business, Dayton City Media LLC.”

Noah told investigators he promoted Esken to the publisher’s position last year and “gave her complete control of the company” and its dayto-day operations.

She had been associate publisher before the publicly announced promotion in September.

Noah told police that Esken was the sole authorized person to print checks for the business, but he was the only authorized signer of these checks, according to police reports.

“Mr. Noah then began showing me several checks that he identified as fraudulent. They had been made out to Wanda Esken for various reasons and amounts,” the report says. “He stated his signature had been forged on the checks.”

According to the report, Noah said numerous vendors reported being overcharged, and in some cases, their credit cards were charged for the same purchase multiple times.

Noah told police the company that printed the City Paper informed him that he owed about $35,000 in back payments. Noah also said his office space landlord informed him that he was behind on rent for four months, the report said.

The downtown Dayton building that houses the City Paper’s offices is owned by the Victoria Theatre Association.

The Dayton City Paper last published Sept. 11.

The publication’s Facebook page, which was accessible early in the day on Sept. 19, appeared to have been taken down later that day.

On the same day, the homepage of the publication’s website transitioned from a collection of featured stories from the Sept. 11 edition to an archive of past editions.