The U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies are investigating claims that farmers in Darke and other Ohio and Indiana counties are conspiring with insurance agents to defraud the federal crop insurance program according to a report by the Dayton Daily News.
“There is an ongoing conspiracy, involving crop insurance agents and farmers, to defraud the federal crop insurance program” through “money laundering,” the paper reported Kevin Ganger, a special agent with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Inspector General, as saying in an affidavit for a search warrant executed at a Versailles farm Sept. 13.
According to the report, that affidavit was used to obtain nine other search warrants for farms in Mercer and Auglaize counties in Ohio, as well as Jay, Wells and Adams counties in Indiana. The investigation was initiated, according to the paper, based on information from “several sources” that two insurance agents were furnishing Darke County farmers with falsified actual production history forms to increase indemnity payments for federal crop insurance claims.
Ganger noted that the Versailles farmer received FCIC and other crop insurance payments of $66,612 in 1997, $208,257 in 1998 and $288,128 in 1999.
He also noted, according to the report, that eight other Darke County farmers are “under administrative review” and, like the Versailles farmer, have also switched their insurance to the agents who are targets of the investigation. And when they switched their crop insurance, he said, they submitted amended actual production history certifications “which increased their approved yields.”
No charges have yet been filed in the case.
Topics Agencies Agribusiness
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