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Roseville City Hall Scandal Includes Arrest, Allegations Of Misusing Public Funds

ROSEVILLE (CBS13) — A Roseville City Hall scandal has left a longtime employee facing felony charges of misusing public funds.

Kenneth Glotzbach, 54, is the City of Roseville's assistant director of waste water utilities. He is now facing big trouble for how he handled the hiring of 32-year old Marisa Tricas.

Court documents show Glotzbach first met Tricas in Washington DC in 2018, then created a position for a water project that did not exist in 2019, allegedly lying to Roseville city councilmembers to get funding for it.

He arranged for her moving expenses and paid for her law school tuition, all using taxpayer dollars, and he tried hiding the arrangement.

The court documents read:

"…Glotzbach asked…to create a special invoice for Marisa Tricas' law school tuition which would include her student number but would omit her name…"

In all, prosecutors allege moving expenses, travel expenses, billed labor, and law school tuition equal a total of $307,000 in fraudulent money billed to taxpayers.

Prosecutors also showed text messages between the pair discussing the investigation, including several from Tricas reading

"…I may pull the discrimination card and the woman card too…"

and

"…I'm not super sure yet…"

A text from Glotzbach describes a conversation with a colleague reading:

"…he said it could indicate I was going out of my way and making poor decisions because of my attraction to you. I assured him I was only trying to keep my promise to you…"

Attorney Mark Reichel is following the case.

"That's a big problem because anybody can point to that and say, 'Look, if everything was on the up and up, and transparent, and you weren't worried about anything, you sure wouldn't have these text messages, making sure that you got the story straight,' " Reichel said.

A spokesperson for the city of Roseville issued a statement saying they could not comment on an active investigation.

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