Santa photo company fires sex offender, wife

Ivan Moreno, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 6, 2006 at midnight

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A husband and wife were fired by the company that runs a Santa photo display at the Westminster mall after company officials learned the man was a registered sex offender and that his wife helped him get the job as a photographer.

"She was instrumental in helping him slip under the wire," Jeff Angelo, president of SEPIA Photo Promotions, said today. SEPIA is the company that contracts with the mall for their Santa Claus photo display.

The mall pulled the plug on the display Tuesday evening.

Angelo said the wife of Jonathan Yeoman, a registered sex offender, was the manager of the photo display and was responsible for handling his application. Angelo said Yeoman used his middle name, Scott, as his first name, which failed to bring up his history when the company did its background check.

Angelo said Yeoman, who had been working at the mall for a week, would not have been hired if his 1992 Indiana conviction for molesting a child had come up during the check. Yeoman served 6 years for that conviction, according to the Indiana Sheriffs’ Sex Offender Registry.

Stephanie Topkoff, a Westminster police spokeswoman, said authorities don’t believe Yeoman committed a crime while working at the mall.

"We’ve received no complaints from anyone that he did anything wrong while he was working there," she said.

Topkoff said Yeoman was not on parole or probation and did not have any restrictions that prohibited him from being around children.

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