A North Carolina man will now be going to jail for his role in the multimillion dollar scam.
A man living in North Carolina will be leaving his current home in order to take up residence in jail after having taken part in a crop insurance fraud scam that is currently estimated to have stolen approximately $21 million.
The scandal has stretched over several participants but this individual has just pled guilty to his crimes.
The man’s name is Jimmy Thomas Sasser, from Wilson, North Carolina. On Wednesday, he stated that he was guilty of a number of different crimes as a part of this crop insurance fraud. Those illegal activities included conspiring to make false statements, wire fraud, mail fraud, and threatening a witness.
Following the admission of his participation in the crop insurance scam, his sentence was handed down.
The federal judge in the case ruled that Sasser be imprisoned for four years for the role that he played in defrauding the crop insurance system. That sentence would have been longer, but it was reduced because of the man’s cooperation in helping to convict other participants in the scam.
The prosecutors in the case explained that the 61 year old man, who was formerly an insurance adjuster, took part in a massive scam with other people, which ran from 1996 through until 2007. This included efforts for the falsification of crop insurance claims regarding tobacco fields that were said to have been damaged by weather events.
Beyond going to jail, Sasser is also required to pay restitution worth $21 million. He is one of several convictions that have been made in this case of crop insurance fraud in North Carolina. Other participants range from other adjusters who were working in the state, as well as the farmers themselves.
They conspired to defraud the federal crop insurance program (the FCIC)that is designed to help to protect growers against damage to their plants as a result of various types of severe events, such as drought, flooding, high winds, and others. That program is already greatly struggling for money and could greatly benefit from capturing fraudsters such as was the case this time.
