Supervisor allegedly places bogus ads targeting employee
BY STEVE E. SWENSON, Californian staff writer sswenson@bakersfield.com
The first calls sounded like a rude practical joke. Then they got scary.
People in March started calling Scott Polston's home wanting gay sex. Polston is married with two children.
Next people started calling to buy a vintage car he didn't own.
Then dozens of people showed up on his doorstep, wanting to haul away free furniture.
That frightened Polston's wife, Marlana, who runs a pre-school center out of the home.
All those unwanted calls and people were responding to ads on Craigslist, an online classified site. Bakersfield police traced the ads to a supervisor where Polston works -- Foster Farms Dairy on Knudsen Drive.
Polston has filed a worker's compensation claim over stress and hand injury claims. He is a relief driver and loader at the ice cream part of the business.
He is presently off work receiving only $48 a day as disability pay, he said.
The supervisor, Michael Odell Simpson, 43, has pleaded not guilty to felony charges of attempted burglary, three counts of pretending to be another person and one count of unauthorized use of another's identity.
Simpson, who no longer works at Foster Farms according to Polston and a representative of the company, is free on $50,000 bail. He could not be reached for comment.
The experience, Polston said, has been "horrendous. I felt belittled."
When he first started getting calls, he thought someone was playing a bad practical joke on him.
But then he started getting calls on his work cell phone, he said.
Craigslist stopped the ads when Polston complained and the service gave Polston information to help track down the person placing the ads.
Police used that information to trace the ads to Simpson, a search warrant affidavit says.
The calls were one thing, Polston said. But when people started showing up at his house, that seemed dangerous, he said.
One man came to pay cash -- about $5,000 -- for a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro that was in the ad, according to Polston and the search warrant.
Soon after he stopped that ad, about 40 to 50 people came by his home to pick up free furniture, he said.
Further criminal hearings for Simpson are scheduled Sept. 15 and 17.
Most CommentedMost Popular
Since Karen Goh returned to Kern County from a publishing career in New York in 2004, she has helped foster a strong network of Christian leaders in government, politics, media, business and nonprofits.
California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, giving "seriously ill Californians ... the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes" as recommended by a physician.
A settlement has been reached in radio talk show host Inga Barks' sexual harassment lawsuit against former co-host Scott Cox and American General Media.
Is Kern County, as has widely been reported, really the expulsion capital of California? That's the question posed Friday by state Sen. Michael Rubio, D-Shafter, to 50 or so Kern County educators, elementary and high school district administrators and community leaders.
Since Karen Goh returned to Kern County from a publishing career in New York in 2004, she has helped foster a strong network of Christian leaders in government, politics, media, business and nonprofits.
Kern County has agreed to pay a Kern River Valley family $1 million for wrongfully taking their son in 2008 when the family was in a dispute with the South Fork Union School District over how school officials were dealing with the boy's food allergies.
Young's Marketplace, an independent grocery store that's a Bakersfield institution, will close at the end of the week.
Bakersfield’s Faast Pharmacy is going out of business and will be acquired by the big chain CVS, it was confirmed Monday.