Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — Criminal cases involving a Cache County funeral home director accused of arranging to have sex with a boy, then using bad checks to get out of jail following his arrest, have been moved to Salt Lake City.
The cases involving Lonnie Kent Nyman, 44, of Millville, Cache County — the owner and president of Nyman Funeral Home — have been transferred to 3rd District Court and the Utah Attorney General's Office is now listed in court documents as the lead prosecuting agency in both cases, according to court records.
The motions and orders approving the transfers, however, have been sealed. Those documents normally outline the reasons for the change in venue.
Dan Burton, spokesman for the Utah Attorney General's Office, said Wednesday that the change of venue was because of a "potential conflict" with witnesses, and to protect the identities of those witnesses, a motion was filed to seal the court documents.
Nyman is charged in one case with three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony; four counts of dealing in harmful materials to a minor, witness tampering and obstruction of justice, third-degree felonies; and two counts of enticing a minor, a class A misdemeanor.
Police say Nyman arranged to have sex with a boy in March using the app Grindr. During their conversations, Nyman and the boy sent each other pornographic images, according to charging documents.
He was arrested Oct. 30 on a $100,000 warrant and booked into the Cache County Jail.
Nyman wrote two checks on two separate credit cards under “Nyman Holdings LLC.," each for $7,000, according to a police affidavit. But there wasn't sufficient funds in Nyman's account to cover either check, the report states.
On Nov. 20 he was arrested again. and on Nov. 26 he was charged in 1st District Court with engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity, two counts of communication fraud, two counts of issuing a bad check, and unlawful use of a financial card, all second-degree felonies. He was also charged with a second count of unlawful use of a financial card, a third-degree felony.
The two cases were formally filed in 3rd District Court on Wednesday.
