Farm insurance fraud is cheating taxpayers out of millions

A satellite image of fields, showing plant density. The federal government has been using satellites, data-mining and other tools to look for fraud. (U.S. Department of Agriculture / January 9, 2006)


Perpetrators falsely claim weather or insects destroyed their crops and cash in on a government-backed insurance program. Some don't bother planting at all. Others sell their harvests in secret.

By P.J. Huffstutter,
Los Angeles Times
February 6, 2011

Reporting from Sacramento

The federal investigator took the witness stand and described the crime scene: a sprawling field clogged with boulders, native grasses and knee-high sagebrush.

The defendant, a California farmer, had said the site was a 200-acre wheat field. But the investigator found no tilled soil, no tractors, no plows. In fact, she testified, she found no wheat.

The field was just a field — and a prime example, federal prosecutors allege, of a wave of agricultural insurance scams sprouting across the nation.

Such crimes are being perpetrated by farmers who fraudulently claim that weather or insects destroyed their crops to cash in on a government-backed insurance program. Some cheats never bother planting at all. Others sell their harvests in secret and then file claims for losses, collecting twice for the same crop.

(More here.)