Olson sentencing postponed until January

Frontiersman staff

ANCHORAGE — A sentencing planned for Karen Olson, a former executive for the Matanuska Creamery, has been delayed a second time.

Olson’s attorney, Steven Wells, filed a motion asking to move the sentencing hearing to early January 2015 because of a previously existing commitment to a homicide trial in Kodiak, federal court documents show.

U.S. District Court Judge Tim Burgess ordered the sentencing be rescheduled for 1:30 p.m., Jan. 20, 2015, at the Anchorage courthouse, according to court documents.

A jury found Olson guilty in July of one count of false statements to U.S. Department of Agriculture Officials, and one count of misprision, or hiding her knowledge of a felony, federal court documents show. They acquitted Olson of a related mail-fraud charge.

The Kodiak trial is slated to begin Nov. 5 and last through week of Thanksgiving, according to a motion filed Nov. 3.

Olson ran the ill-fated creamery when it abruptly closed in 2013, leaving behind equipment, trucks, a pile of moldering cheese, and debts to the state. The creamery had been in operation for about six years when it closed, and employed some equipment left over from the collapse of the Matanuska Maid Dairy.

Prosecutors have asked for a 30-day jail sentence for Olson, though the reasoning for the sentence remains unclear.

Prosecutors had previously argued that Olson had a personal interest in the dairy’s success, even at the expense of taxpayers, court documents say.