PALMER — The former chief of a volunteer fire department near Delta Junction is facing felony charges linked to significant alleged thefts that triggered a service disruption last year.
Michael Paschall, 62, served as chief of the Rural Deltana Volunteer Fire Department until January 2024.
A Fairbanks grand jury indicted Paschall in late December on charges including theft, scheme to defraud, felony misapplication of property, falsifying business records and evidence tampering. The charges stem from actions taken between August 2017 and January 2024, according to the indictment.
Paschall, who served both as chief and board secretary, is accused of stealing more than $400,000 from the department’s bank account and falsified records to hide the theft, according to state officials. He left Alaska with a department laptop, they said.
Paschall, who is currently in North Carolina, said only that he is cooperating with authorities when asked if he wanted to comment on the charges.
A court-ordered summons requires Paschall to appear at a Jan. 8 hearing in Fairbanks. Paschall indicated he received the summons in an email included in the court file.
The Rural Deltana department briefly shut down and the board of directors removed Paschall as chief and secretary in January 2024 after officials discovered “accounting discrepancies in our operating fund that have had a significant negative impact on the financial well-being of our department,” according to a letter from the board published in the Delta Wind newspaper.
The board also said the department was uninsured at the time “through neglect or incompetence” and needed to suspend operations until that was remedied.
Interim fire chief Josh Olson was made chief in July.
Rural Deltana, with a station in Clearwater and Big Delta, serves residents who live outside the city of Delta Junction, which operates its own fire department. The Delta Junction Volunteer Fire Department responded to calls in the Rural Deltana district during the department’s shutdown.
Paschall is one of several officials in Alaska accused of stealing funds from public entities.
The former treasurer for the City of Houston was sentenced in July to spend 2 1/2 years in prison for embezzling more than $1 million from the town and from a Wasilla-based equipment company. A former clerk for the city of Anderson was sentenced in January 2024 to spend more than a year in prison for embezzling over $140,000 in a three-year period.