Jeffrey Varga

Mesa County Deputy Clerk Facing Charges for Alleged Burglary and Cyber Crimes

In this news source, it explains the crimes committed by the Mesa County Deputy Clerk,

Belinda Knisley. Belinda Knisley had been a part of the Clerk’s Office for some time, as she was

66 years old when she was arrested. After some time, the Office was getting a lot of complaints

from other coworkers about Knisley. They all stated about how she seemed to be creating a

hostile work environment for everyone. These complaints eventually got their way to the

administrators. The administrators had no choice but to suspend Knisley on leave where she was

not allowed to be inside the building or use her login to access any of the office’s systems. It was

unclear of how long she was actually suspended for. But it was reported two days after her

suspension, she was found at the office using the computers against the administrators wishes.

Sometime after that it was found that she didn’t use her own log in to access the computers, she

was using County Clerk Tina Peter's login information. When she was on her account, she

seemed to be trying to print something off. They are unsure what, but Peters at that time was

under an investigation by the district attorney and the FBI. So, it can be determined that Knisley

was trying to do something on Peters account to make her guilty of a crime. Knisley was

eventually charged with accessing a computer and the network without authorization. She was

also charged with trespassing into a building with the intent to commit a crime, that crime being

fraud. These crimes were labeled as a Second-Degree Burglary and a Cybercrime. After it was

all over she was given a $2,000 Bond and she was ordered by the court to not have any type of

contact, in person or out of person with the office itself or any of the employees.
This can easily qualify as a computer crime as the suspect, which is Belinda Knisley, was

accessing a computer and network without the proper authorization from the County’s Offices or

the administrators themselves. Because of that It makes it an illegal use of the company’s

computer where she was easily able to take information and print of a document, that wasn’t

Her's to take. How they could prove she actually did that was in multiple ways. First the fact that

a witness saw her inside the building when she wasn’t allowed inside of the building. The second

thing is that she could have easily denied the fact that she wasn’t using the computers and the

fact that she never logged in. But they were able to check the system for things, such as login

records. They could see that Tina Peters logged in at the exact same time that Belinda was

accessing the computers database. And due to the fact that Peters wasn’t in the office at the time

when she “supposedly” logged in, they could easily pin the crime on Knisley.

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/mesa-county-deputy-clerk-burglary-cyber-

crimes/73-8485a45c-1bc6-4f19-beae-fa4b8d6393b3