Washington
Rancher sentenced for ‘ghost cattle’ fraud
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — An eastern Washington rancher has been sentenced to 11 years in prison by a federal judge for a massive “ghost cattle” scam that defrauded Tyson Foods and another company out of more than $244 million.
Cody Easterday, 51, of Mesa, Washington, was sentenced Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Yakima, Washington, for what U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Bastian called “the biggest theft or fraud I’ve seen in my career.”
Prosecutors contended Easterday fraudulently charged the companies for approximately 265,000 head of cattle that did not exist and destroyed his family’s ranching empire in the process.
“No one is above the law,” said Vanessa Waldref, the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Washington. “Mr. Easterday amassed significant personal wealth, yet, he wanted more, so he defrauded his victims of nearly a quarter billion dollars by charging for cattle that never existed.”
Easterday pleaded guilty to wire fraud on March 31, 2021.
The judge also ordered him to pay $244 million in restitution and serve three years of probation after he is released from prison.
Prosecutors said Easterday and his business, Easterday Ranches Inc., entered into agreements with Tyson Foods and another company, whereby Easterday Ranches agreed to purchase and feed cattle on their behalf.
Under these agreements, the victims advanced Easterday Ranches the costs of buying and raising the cattle.
Prosecutors said Easterday used most of the fraud proceeds to cover approximately $200 million in losses Easterday incurred from commodity futures trading on behalf of Easterday Ranches.
The remainder of the $244 million Easterday stole from the companies went toward Easterday’s personal use and for the benefit of the Easterday farming empire, which included more than 22,000 acres of farmland, 150 employees and revenues of more than $250 million.
Shortly after Easterday’s massive fraud was uncovered, Easterday Ranches and another of his companies, Easterday Farms, Inc., went into bankruptcy, prosecutors said.
“The scale and brazenness of Mr. Easterday’s fraud is immense,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian M. Donovan, who handled restitution and bankruptcy proceedings on behalf of the United States. “Mr. Easterday’s greed destroyed his family’s farming empire and harmed innocent victims.”
California
Former veteran FBI agent convicted of bribery
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former FBI agent in Northern California who handled national security issues was convicted Tuesday of accepting at least $150,000 in gifts and cash bribes to provide confidential information to a man with organized crime ties, prosecutors said.
Babak Broumand, 56, of Lafayette, was found guilty in Los Angeles of conspiracy, bribery of a public official and monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
He could face 15 to 45 years in federal prison when he is sentenced in January.
Broumand, who joined the FBI in 1999, worked until 2018 in the bureau’s San Francisco office, where he was responsible for national security investigations, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said from 2015 to 2018, Broumand accepted “cash, checks, private jet flights, a Ducati motorcycle, hotel stays, escorts, meals, and other items of value” in return for searching law enforcement databases to help a self-proclaimed lawyer and his criminal associates learn if they were under investigation and avoid prosecution.
Court documents refer to the lawyer only as “E.S.” but his name was Edgar Sargsyan, who earlier pleaded guilty to bribing Broumand and another federal agent and testified at his trial.
The two men were introduced at a Beverly Hills cigar club.
Sargsyan has admitted making a fortune by stealing identities, making credit card charges and taking out bank loans in their names, and while he falsely claimed to be an attorney he acknowledged actually paying a friend to take the bar exam under his name, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“To conceal the nature of their corrupt relationship, Broumand made it falsely appear that E.S. was working as an FBI source” and wrote false reports stating he was making legitimate database queries, according to the Department of Justice.
One involved Levon Termendzhyan, whom prosecutors described as an Armenian organized crime figure for whom Sargsyan had worked.
Termendzhyan was convicted in 2020 in a Utah federal court of involvement in a $1 billion fraud scheme involving renewable fuel tax credits, prosecutors said. He awaits sentencing.
Nevada
State high court overturns road-rage murder conviction
RENO, Nev. (AP) — The Nevada Supreme Court has overturned a murder conviction in a high-profile, road-rage case after it says the district judge in Reno wrongly concluded the fatal gunshot through a truck window constituted a burglary.
Prosecutors had argued under alternate theories of premeditation or burglary that the bullet’s unlawful entry into the vehicle was effectively a burglary that satisfied one of the legal hurdles necessary to find Wayne Cameron guilty of first-degree murder in the February 2020 killing of Jarrod Faust.
In a 2-1 ruling last week, the state Supreme Court disagreed, reversed the conviction and sent the case back to Washoe District Court, where a jury found Cameron guilty in July 2021 after a nine-day trial.
“The prosecutor’s `bullet-entry’ argument at trial was improper and the district court erred by allowing the prosecutor to advance that argument,” the court ruled Sept. 28.
The Reno Gazette Journal first reported the ruling on Tuesday. The Washoe County District Attorney’s Office didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to a request from The Associated Press for comment.
The 2020 incident began when Cameron said he tailed Faust for several minutes through Reno residential streets after Faust nearly hit a motorcyclist, finally confronting him in a cul-de-sac. Police said Cameron shot Faust as he sat, unarmed, in his truck. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Justice Abbi Silver wrote in the majority opinion, joined by Justice Elissa Cadish, that Cameron or the gun itself had to cross into the truck to establish burglary.
Justice Kristina Pickering wrote in a dissent that the jury reasonably rendered a verdict regardless of whether Nevada law “forecloses an entry-by-projectile theory of burglary” because there was sufficient evidence to suggest premeditation and deliberation.
