A woman suspected of stealing from a high school rodeo club’s bank account in Nye County is a disbarred former Las Vegas attorney who did prison time for stealing tens of thousands of dollars from former clients.
Jeanne Metzger was arrested Feb. 2 and released on bail the next day after the Nye County Sheriff’s Office said she made 10 separate purchases using money from the Tonopah High School Rodeo Club’s account between February and September of last year, an arrest report said.
According to the report, the purchases totaled $3,039.39.
Metzger is also known as Jeanne Winkler, who was sentenced in 2016 to up to seven years in prison — but only served just over two and a half years — after she stole more than $140,000 from former clients and pleaded guilty to theft.
A Nye County Sheriff’s Office employee confirmed that Metzger and Winkler are the same person.
“Yes it is the same person,” Tamara Davis, an administration tech at the sheriff’s office, said in an email.
According to the arrest report, a person — her identity is redacted from the report — who co-founded and ran the Tonopah High School Rodeo Club with Metzger contacted police and shared bank statements showing the purchases with deputies.
The person also told deputies that she discussed the issue in December with Metzger, who said the purchases were all accidental and that she would pay back the money.
By February, however, no money had been paid back, the arrest report says.
A deputy went to what the report described as Metzger’s business, Sagebrush Dreams, on Feb. 2, in Tonopah, and asked about the purchases. Metzger told the deputy the same thing — that the purchases were accidental and that she would pay them back, according to the report.
(While the report lists Sagebrush Dreams as a tack and feed store, online searches suggest the store is named Sagebrush Dreams Flowers and More.)
The deputy arrested Metzger.
Metzger, who was referred to as Jeanne Winkler in previous Review-Journal news articles, has found herself at the center of disciplinary hearings and criminal proceedings over the years.
In 2011, she lost her Nevada law license over allegations she misappropriated about $233,000 from her client trust account. She was also arrested on state theft and embezzlement charges that same year.
In 2015 a federal judge ordered her to pay a $47,000 share in restitution and serve 100 hours of community service for her role in a scheme to take over and defraud Las Vegas-area homeowners associations.
In that case, she cooperated with prosecutors and became a government witness against former Family Court Judge Steven Jones. Winkler was a victim in a decade-long investment fraud scheme involving Jones and testified that she invested about $392,000 in the scheme — and that about $260,000 of that money came from her client trust fund.
“Someone I thought was my friend totally and utterly betrayed me,” Winkler said about Jones as she fought back tears.
In a 2020 Review-Journal story about Nevada’s flawed restitution system, a former Winkler client who said she lost $70,000 to Winkler said she was shocked to learn that Winkler had opened a flower shop but had only paid a fraction of the $143,000 a judge had ordered her to pay to nine victims.
In the 2020 story, Winkler said she paid what she owed in restitution.
“Your information is wrong because I have (paid restitution) so thank you very much,” she told the Review-Journal before hanging up during a phone call.
In the Nye County case, Metzger faces a charge of embezzlement over $1,200 but under $5,000, according to the arrest report.
Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrettClarkson_ on Twitter.