A South Dakota man has been sentenced to three months in prison for one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Calvin Diehl, 60-years-old, pled guilty in June to telling employees at a Souix Center, Iowa grain co-op to mix lower quality oats into soybeans and sell them as soybeans. Besides mixing oats with soybeans, employees at Farmers Cooperative Society were told to cover up oats in storage bins and in trucks with soybeans in order to trick USDA inspectors. During the investigation, authorities found false statements, false certificates, false entries, and fixed reports given to the co-op’s bank.
When USDA officials were tipped off about the conspiracy, they went to different locations across South Dakota and Iowa to see what they could find. They discovered that of the almost 88,000 bushels of grain in the bins, only 34,354 bushels were actually soybeans even though they were all certified as soybeans.
In addition to Diehl’s three-month prison sentence, he was also fined $7,500 and will be on supervised release for one year after serving his time. Another employee, Kenneth Ehrp, was charged with the scandal as well and still awaits sentencing.
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