news story / By Hank Sims

Ad Con

Ex-salesman, office manager of local ad agency stand accused of embezzlement, conspiracy

(Dec. 9, 2010)  If Bill Morrill was hoping for satisfaction — some kind of closure, maybe, or at least an acknowledgement that he had been wronged — he would be disappointed.

Morrill, a salesman for Eureka Television Group and host of Fox 29’s popular “101 Milestones” feature, made sure to be there in Humboldt County Superior Court last Monday as his former business associate Jeff Lang was arraigned on charges of embezzlement and conspiracy. Morrill attended the hearing with Christian Pennington and Bruce McFarland — ex-employee and ex-owner, respectively, of the now-bankrupt advertising agency Lang was accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from.

Lang and his partner, Marcie Wright, both of whom were arrested in October following a two-and-a-half-year investigation by the Eureka Police Department, entered pleas of not guilty.

“It sucked,” Morrill later reflected. “It was like, they didn’t even blink an eye. They wouldn’t even look at me or Christian or Bruce.”

But last Monday was just the first chapter in what is bound to be a colorful trial, given the number of local businesses and local media outlets allegedly burned by Lang and Wright during a money-grabbing spree in 2006-07 — starting, most tragically, with their employer. Lang was an Adcom sales representative and Wright its office manager at the time, and according to court documents the two are being charged with forging company checks, maxing out company credit cards and wiring money out of company accounts to place into their own. By the time the alleged embezzlement frenzy was over, Adcom was mortally wounded.

In addition, a police affidavit charges Lang with convincing at least one advertising client to write checks to him, personally, rather than the agency. Their money, which was supposed to pay media outlets such as Morrill’s to run advertisements, appears never to have arrived at its intended destination. (Though only one such case makes it into the police affidavit, Lang’s alleged practice was apparently much more widespread. The Journal was left holding the bag on a small amount of unpaid bills, according to sales manager Mike Herring, and has a judgment from small claims court stating that Lang owes the paper some $4,000.)

In the wake of last Monday’s arraignment — and in advance of a preliminary hearing scheduled for Jan. 5 — not many of Lang and Wright’s acquaintances or alleged victims seem interested in speaking about the case. McFarland did not return a call seeking comment. Neither did a couple of Lang and Wright’s former Adcom coworkers. Likewise, executives at the Sacramento News & Review, where Lang has worked since at least April 2009 — as recently as last week, he was listed as the weekly newspaper’s sales director — didn’t return multiple calls.

One person associated with the case who certainly didn’t mind talking about it was Eureka Police Detective Ron Prose, who last week expressed great sympathy for the torment that McFarland, especially, was put through.

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