City to vote to release Tuttle computers
Published 9:57 am Monday, January 9, 2012
Albert Lea Abstract shut its doors to the public sometime between 11 a.m. and noon June 22. Albert Lea and state investigators hauled files and computers to a truck for evidence. People who showed up for realty meetings were greeted by a closed sign. -- Tim Engstrom/Albert Lea Tribune
The Albert Lea City Council is slated to vote tonight on whether to release 13 computers in the custody of the Albert Lea Police Department that were seized from Albert Lea Abstract Co., after the company went into receivership.
Linda Tuttle
The computers had been held pending the criminal prosecution of the company’s owner, former Freeborn County Commissioner Linda Tuttle, but have since been abandoned by the company’s trustee. They were seized during a search of Albert Lea Abstract Co. in June 2010.
Tuttle is serving a 3 1/2-year prison sentence in Alderson, W.Va., for stealing more than $1 million from her client’s escrow accounts for personal use. She was sentenced in August for wire fraud in federal court in Minneapolis. The judge ordered her to pay full restitution of $1.32 million, though she is unlikely ever to be able to pay it.
According to background information provided by the city, Capitol Lien Records & Research Inc. seeks to obtain some data that is on the computers. It also previously entered into an agreement to purchase most of the assets of the company.
The agreement states the city will be held harmless from any liability stemming from the transaction, and the company has agreed to keep the information on the computers as confidential.
Following Tuttle’s release from prison, she will be on supervised release for three years with the U.S. Probation Office and must adhere to a long list of conditions.
Albert Lea police officers and agents from the Minnesota Division of Insurance Fraud Prevention were inside and outside the Albert Lea Abstract and Strong Agency Inc. on June 22, 2010, with a U-Haul truck parked outside on Washington Avenue. They loaded computers and boxes of files onto the truck as evidence. The Division of Insurance Fraud Prevention is part of the Department of Commerce.
