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A Kentucky farmer is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to defrauding the federal crop insurance program of almost $1.5 million.

Robert Thomas Hunt, of Taylor County in central Kentucky, asked grain haulers to sell his soybean, corn and wheat under his children’s names, to make it look like his crop yields had fallen sharply from 2015 to 2021, according to his March 27 plea agreement.

For those seven years, Hunt claimed heavy losses on his multi-peril crop insurance policy, including a high of $322,000 in 2015. The crop insurance program paid a total of $1.49 million, the court documents show. All the while, his farm sold plenty of produce but disguised the sales through the use of family members’ names.

“Hunt knew none of these individuals had an insurable interest in the crops sold in their names and intentionally withheld these sales from the crop loss adjuster,” the plea agreement explains. “This obscured Hunt’s true production and resulted in inflated insurance losses.”

Hunt also used different addresses for his children to further conceal his actual grain sales.

He now faces up to 30 years in prison, forfeiture of his property, restitution to the insurance program, and a maximum fine of $1 million.

This is the latest guilty plea in multiple federal investigations into crop insurance fraud in Kentucky. One of the largest crimes involved a tobacco farmer, who pleaded guilty last year to more than $9 million in crop insurance fraud. Since 2017, authorities have charged more than 30 people in the state with crop insurance fraud, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.

Topics Fraud Agribusiness Kentucky