FARGO, N.D. (AP) - Prosecutors say one of two North Dakota brothers accused of scamming the government out of $2 million in crop insurance payments between 2002 and 2010orchestrated a similar scheme nearly 20 years ago when he underreported his potato crop by more than 87 percent.
Aaron Johnson, 50, and Derek Johnson, 47, who grew potatoes in the Carrington area, are charged in federal court with conspiring to receive illegal payments by intentionally damaging the spuds. They have pleaded not guilty. Trial is scheduled for July 15.
Aaron Johnson pleaded guilty in a similar case in 1995. Court documents filed Friday show he falsely claimed he and his brother produced about 9,500 bags of potatoes weighing 100 pounds each, when it was actually more than 76,000 bags. Aaron Johnson collected $32,740 from the USDA, including $16,370 for himself and $16,370 for his brother.
A federal public defender was not immediately available for comment.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nick Chase wrote in court documents that the information from the 1995 case is meant to be used as evidence for proof of “motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident and identification.”
Federal prosecutors would not comment on the case.
Court documents show that Aaron Johnson in 1995 obtained a book of blank scale tickets from the Northwood Elevator, falsified 21 of the tickets and submitted them to the government. He also admitted to sending a bogus letter to the USDA from “D&S Sales” that was purportedly from someone named John Gooden. Johnson said Gooden was someone he used to work with in Arizona.
Once he submitted the false claims, Johnson was going to allow his stored potatoes to rot but then decided to sell them when the market for potatoes took a positive turn, according to court documents. Johnson admitted he was going to keep the spuds in the warehouse and “let them melt into nothing until the secondary market opened up. That’s when we sold them.”
Aaron Johnson was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay back the money.
The current case accuses the brothers of adding chemicals to the potato seeds so they would not grow and purposely damaging the plants with cultivators. They also applied chemicals and added spoiled and frozen potatoes to their stored crop, which caused the potatoes to rot, and turned up the heat in their warehouse to speed up the deterioration, prosecutors say.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.