Former St. Cloud bar owner sentenced to 71 months in prison for arson [Pioneer Press]

Saint Paul Pioneer Press (MN)

A former St. Cloud bar owner will spend six years in federal prison for burning down his business and trying to collect $1.9 million in insurance claims.

U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud on Friday sentenced Andrew Charles Welsh, 43, of St. Joseph, Minn., to 71 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Tostrud also ordered Welsh to pay more than $3 million in restitution, including nearly $193,000 to the St. Cloud Fire Department.

In May, about two weeks before trial, Welsh pleaded guilty to one count of arson for setting fire to his office in the basement of the Press Bar and Parlor on Feb. 17, 2020. The building, which burned for 12 hours, was completely destroyed and later demolished.

Court documents paint a picture of a man who was struggling with the weight of owning the bar and a looming divorce.

“Plainly stated, this is a crime motivated by greed,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger wrote this month in a court document in which he asked the judge to impose the 71-month prison sentence.

In April 2016, Welsh and his then-wife, Jessie, bought the bar located in the historic center of downtown St. Cloud for $825,000. He put $100,000 down, and then was two years late on a $50,000 payment; he only made it after the sellers began the process of cancelling the contract for deed.

With a $457,000 payment looming, Welsh tried selling the bar but soon learned he likely would not be able to recover anything more than what he owed to the sellers. Not content to merely break even, Luger wrote, Welsh instead “planned the drastic step of burning down the bar in the hopes of turning a huge profit from the insurance proceeds.”

Shortly after the bar closed for the night, Welsh went down to the basement office of the bar and used gasoline to set a fire on top of his desk. He then left the building and went home, leaving the fire to grow. Within 20 minutes, smoke began to appear on the streets of downtown St. Cloud. Ten minutes later, a fire alarm activated in an abutting building where a resident was sleeping upstairs.

Although the surrounding buildings were saved from destruction, the fire caused immense harm to the heart of downtown St. Cloud, with the city and the surrounding businesses suffering millions of dollars in damage, according to Luger.

Welsh then retained an insurance adjuster to help him file two insurance claims with Illinois Casualty Company — one for $1.6 million for the building, the other for $337,000 for personal property.

Although Welsh had financial troubles, Luger wrote, he had “legitimate means” of dealing with them, including selling the bar to break even or surrendering the property back to the sellers on the contract for deed.

“Failing all else, he could have declared bankruptcy,” Luger wrote. “Instead of pursuing a legitimate solution, however, defendant callously and selfishly opted to endanger the property and lives of others for his own profit.”