Financial Food Poisoning and the War on Farmers: Where’s a good movie director when you need one?

There’s a war going on. It’s happening mostly behind the scenes, at the desks of a coven of crooked bureaucrats and banksters nationwide. If you thought the bank bail out ate a hole in your pocket, watch what the banksters, unindicted bureaucrats and land thieves are doing to the nation’s farmers and to the security of your food supply.

The ongoing thievery in the banking, insurance and real estate industry has ripped the heart out of the economy. As the result of organized financial crime in the financial services and real estate industry, Americans have lost billions of dollars in real estate equity, retirement accounts and investment equity. Real estate values have dropped so much, that millions of homeowners now owe more on their homes than the home is worth.

The drop in real estate value, combined with the catastrophe in the investment industry has eviscerated the economy, creating a financial inferno, which continues to consume jobs, home equity and retirement investments.

What in the world happened? What brought down the most powerful economy in the world?

Can we say greed? How about deregulation? Or, lack of oversight?

An overly friendly regulatory system allowed banks to lend the same funds over and over, leveraging money to impossible heights. When the system finally crashed, the domino effect reverberated across the board, from banking, to real estate, to investment planning, manufacturing and beyond. No industry is untouched, no city unscathed, no citizen is unchanged.

Aided, abetted, and possibly mousetrapped by untold numbers of quantative analysts, "AKA" quants, many of whom are Chinese nationals, the financial services industry created thousands of new investment vehicles in uncharted waters. Now, we learn that the mathematical models upon which many of these mystery meat and secret sauce investment vehicles were based, were tainted and faulty. As the result, the world’s financial system continues to reel from the effects of this financial food poisoning.

Today, everybody’s blaming everyone else. The Republicans blame regulation. The Democrats say there wasn’t enough regulation. Industry analysts blame faulty mathematics, and the investors, employees and taxpayers want to put behinds behind bars.

Yet, the players, con men, forgers, and conspirators remain mostly untouched. Except for a few such as Bernie Madoff, the major players are still free to ply their trade—or spend their loot, or both.
Funny thing, that. For all of the trillions of dollars in equity and real estate value that was lost, for all of the evidence of collusion, corruption, conspiracy, theft, forgery, document deception, perjury and other asserted criminal acts, few have gone to jail—or have even been called on their lies and perjury.

A law website defines perjury as:
... the ’willful and corrupt taking of a false oath in regard to a material matter in a judicial proceeding." It is sometimes called "lying under oath;" that is, deliberately telling a lie in a courtroom proceeding after having taken an oath to tell the truth. It is important that the false statement be material to the case at hand—that it could affect the outcome of the case. It is not considered perjury, for example, to lie about your age, unless your age is a key factor in proving the case.’

Agricultural officials have been lying in open court, in bankruptcy and foreclosure proceedings for more than thirty years, as is proven by a host of testimony, Congressional hearings and investigative reports.
Unfortunately, few farmers are actually able to overcome the tainted testimony in court. No matter how many paid receipts, requests for disclosure, or Discovery, Fair Credit Act demands, or Freedom of Information Act requests they make, most either never receive the pertinent information, or are actually denied access to their own loan files. (Ibid)

The nation has endured a major case of financial food poisoning, as crooks, conspirators and a gaggle of unindicted felons manipulate documents, alter information, break federal Fair Credit disclosure laws, purjure themselves before Congress and courts and take consumers, borrowers and farmers to the cleaners. The liars, perjurors and thieves continue to threaten the nation’s financial security, and compromise the viability of the farm credit process.

Many of the foreclosures against farmers rest on perjured testimony. Federal farm loan agency officials have lied about farm loans, forged documents, perjured themselves in court and, through it all, have reportedly been allowed to operate their agencies with a free reign.

A former Secretary of Agriculture admitted to Congress that most of the agencies have never been audited. Imagine, a federal agency which acts as the "bank of last resort" to millions of farmers, having thousands of branches which have never been audited.

What a license to steal!

As one observer of the American condition once said, "The best way to rob a bank is to own one." And, indeed, the insiders have been busy carting off the loot as fast as their fingers could offshore the funds or manipulate the accounts.

While today’s headlines continue their obsession with the Wall Street-engineered meltdown, a similar and ongoing meltdown in the agriculture sector, particularly among family farmers, goes mostly unnoticed. Except for the occasional headline, the plight of today’s farmers is the bastard stepchild of the news media.

Not sexy enough. Too complicated. Out of sight and out of mind.

Farmers have said there was something rotten in the federal farm loan system for decades. Hundreds of thousands of farmers were losing their livelihoods through foreclosure, when many say their loan records were altered, incomplete or outright in accurate.

Many claim they had paid off loans and were foreclosed on anyway. Others say they were foreclosed for loans they never received or applied for. Billions of dollars in farm land, equipment, mineral rights and equity was sold right out from under them—for pennies on the dollar, and, to this day, thousands say it isn’t right, or even legal.

And, even more frightening, according to a federal audit, the agency’s records are not computerized and in many cases,
The county office staff must rely on memory when considering the applicant’s eligibility for interest rate assistance. If any time has passed or there has been any turn over in staff, this is nearly impossible. As a result, interest rate assistance has been unknowingly approved for ineligible applicants which is only discovered after trying to input the loan closing information. The loan official has then been forced to either ask the bank to withdraw their request or to deny the guarantee after the bank received the conditional commitment and closed their loan. This presents a tremendous credibility problem for FSA. (Building Rural America National Association of Credit Specialistsof theUSDA – Farm Service Agency, 6-25-2007 Federal Manager’s Conference)

"Relying on memory" leaves the loan process open to all sorts of abuses and personnel failures, and the agency has been "relying on memory" and inclinations, for decades. The Garcia class action, the legal action filed by a group of Hispanic farmers against the USDA, in noting the possibilities for fraud and abuse in records and loan servicing that "relies on memory" demands that,
The court-appointed monitor will retain a team of technology experts to perform an audit of the hardware and software currently in use as regards to the FSA farm loan and benefit programs which, by manythe accounts, is badly in need of modernization. The results of the audit will be shared with the court, the USDA, GAO and the appropriate committees of Congress, together with cost estimates for accomplishing this modernization. (www.garciaclassaction.com)

The silent campaign against American farmers is silent only because the story isn’t “sexy” enough to hijack headlines. After all, what is “sexy” about farmers who lose land because of hostile farm loan policies, collusion, racketeering, racism, sexism, age bias, and corruption? What is sexy about farmers who believe they are worth more to their families dead than alive, and who arrange their own deaths in order to give their families insured security? What is sexy about farmers being scared off their land, or even killed when supremacists go beyond harassing phone calls and threatening drive-bys to murder?

Corruption in the farm loan program, corruption in the US banking and investment sectors, unindicted felons still running programs, making policy and receiving paychecks. ’Tis enough to give organized crime a bad name.

And organized crime, criminal conspiracy it is. When employees of federal farm loan programs willingly violate federal law, routinely alter and forge loan documents and reportedly give perjored testimony in court, manipulate documents and violate their own administrative rules as a matter of course, and conduct vendettas against whistleblowers, it’s enough to make a person give up faith in the justice system all together.

Unfortunately, "...in lawsuit after lawsuit, FmHA (precourser to current Farm Services Agency (FSA) has been found guilty of widespread misconduct; in some nstances, even serious criminal acts." (Oklahoma Digest, 5-12-1984)

And, less you think all of the farmers that the feds are foreclosing on are serious deadbeats anyhow, think again. The Oklahoma Digest’s reporter notes that, in one case, "Attorneys and out-of-state FmHA officials who have examined the documents say the unauthorized changs constitute forgery to illegally foreclose on the Surfaces." (Ibid)

The agency has even allegedly charged farmers more interest than the loan contract, promissory note called for, charging 14% on an 11% note. (Ibid) But, the criminality doesn’t end with illegally charging higher interest rates than the promissory note allows. There’s more.

Not to be outdone by merely manipulating loan interest illegally, federal farm loan officials have also been accused of writing loans their own benefit (a Nebraska FSA employee faces 10 counts of wire fraud after allegedly entering false data on electronic filings for the family farm Lincoln Journal Star 5-23-09), writing loans against the alleged borrower’s knowlege and refusing to give farmers’ attorneys "computer print outs showing payments made by borrowers. Acording to agency regulations, this informnation must be made available to the borrower or any authorized representative." (Ibid)

And, then, there’s the hororrific case of alleged vindictive prosecution in the Iowa case of Darwin and Diana Rice. Accordiing to reporter Pete Hardin, writing in the Milkweed:

The shocking history of the U.S. government’s legal persecution of DarwinRice shakes the foundation of the United States’ legal system. How can USDAbureaucrats, U.S. Justice Department lawyers – in league with crooked bankers– so doggedly persecute the Rices into financial ruin? The government’s prose-cution of Darwin Rice rests upon perjured testimony, altered documents, andfalsely-based charges of criminality. From the time that Darwin and Diane Riceapplied for a $200,000 Farm Services Agency (FSA) loan and a $182,000 loanguarantee in early summer 2000, USDA personnel set a trap. One USDA employee instructed Darwin write a $74,400 check from theRice’s supervised account … to herself! When asked, in January 2008, why Dar-win Rice had signed a check made out to her from a “supervised account” holding USDA funds loaned to Darwin Rice, that same FSA loan specialist repliedthat the money was deposited in a trust fund with a law firm to cover legalexpenses (title and loan processing) involved with USDA’s preparing the $200,000 loan and $182,000 loan guarantee for the Rices! (Pete Hardin, Vindictive Prosecution? Feds Hound Darwin Rice, Iowa Farmer. http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:mzhWNRotF88J:www.themilkweed.com/Darwin%2520Rice%2520Nov%252008.pdf+USDA+OIG+employee+fraud&cd=72&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

There is even a claim that Rice was set up because of a whistleblower complaint he made in 1995. Reportedly,
"The United Bank of Iowa installed as head of the newly-acquired branch in Churdan: Rob Walker, onecharacter who’d been fingered by Darwin, nearly 15 years prior, as a major play-er in the FSA loan guarantee fraud. Pay-back time for Darwin from Walker?.The United Bank of Iowa instructed Darwin to sell assets. So, in next twomonths, Darwin sold off $300,000 worth of livestock and grain; those receiptswere used to pay down loans. After that, the bank told Darwin he was too small to farm and had to get out." (Ibid)

After being thumped on the head by the alleged bank fraudster, the Rices got tied up in an agency document forgery where FSA officials allegedly "altered their financial statement after Rices signed it".
"As part of the loan guarantee review process, Darwin and Diane signed two“Farm & Home Plans” for FSA, dated June 30 and July 12, 2000. But post-dated,hand-entered changes in separate plan – dated July 7, 2000 – were used by FSAfor the loan. The Rices claim they never saw the July 7, 2000 Farm & Home Plan.That July 7, 2000 document later surfaced, complete with hand-entered changesdated September 19, 2000 (initialed by PJV – Paula J. Volesky, the same FSAemployee who got the $74,400 check from Rice’s account). Amid all these plans,FSA managed to drop the value of Darwin’s assets from $829,309 to $735,369 inone week: a decline of $94,000. (Ibid)

Not to be outdone by the document deception perpetrated against farmers across the country, FSA emloyees have even allegedly participated in bank frauds with loan recipients:

On August 17, 2006, a former FSA loan officer was sentenced in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Arkansas to serve 1 day in Federal prison, 60 months’ supervised release, 6 months of home detention with ankle bracelet monitoring, and ordered to serve 100 hours of community service. The former loan officer was also ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution for assisting another individual to defraud FSA via bank fraud (false entries on bank documents, etc.) (USDA)

Not "sexy" enough? Let’s look at the case of the USDA loan employee who allegedly told a delinquent borrower that he wouldn’t foreclose on her loan in exchange for sexual favors. Responding to an inquiry into the matter, a letter from the Office of the Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, dated October 15, 1999, the USDA said:

After a thorough review of all the information obtained, one can conclude that circumstantialevidence exists that Mr. Vivian Cordova did improperly solicit sexual encounters from femaleborrowers whose Farmers Home Administration loans came under his jurisdiction. (http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:BP5kQMks0lQJ:www.osc.gov/FY2000/Scanned/DI-97-1166/AgencyReport.pdf+USDA+OIG+employee+fraud&cd=88&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

Then, there’s the case of an FSA county committee chairperson who allegedly misused his power of attorney for a dead relative and stuck his hand in the till to the tune of allegedly receiving hundreds of thousands of improper farm program benefits, and the case of another fellow Louisianna FSA employee who who failed to report improper fund disbursement to a farmer on land he no longer owned.

Prompted by a request from the Louisiana State office,we found that a current FSA county committeechairperson used his preexisting power of attorney for arelative to continue to sign up and qualify for programbenefits even though the relative had passed away andthe heirs of the relative’s estate had sold the land in1993. Another Louisiana producer received improperfarm program benefits for crop acreage bases on landthat the producer had sold and, therefore, in which hehad no interest. However, a county office employee,who became aware of the sale, allowed the producer,nonetheless, to receive program payments on the land.For these two cases, producers received improper farmprogram benefits, totaling more than $918,300 (Office of Inspector General Semiannual Report to Congress, FY 2004—First Half)

Because farm loans involve such large amounts of money, a few corrupt insiders can steal, mismanage and redirect tens of millions of dollars in federal farm loan and farm program payments. Because of this opportunity for malfeasance and theft, the USDA Office of Inspector General says investigating USDA employee corruption is a priority.

That said, anecdotal evidence of employee corruption, mismanagement of funds and programs, points to a billion dollar problem that crosses Administrations. Retaliation, institutional corruption, graft, sexual intimidation, racial threats, families being thrown off land, children abused by evicting authorities—sounds like somebody should make a movie.

Michael Moore, where are you? Denzel Washington, where are you? Clint Eastwood, where are you? Spike Lee, where are you? Oprah, where are you?

Monica Davis is an author, columnnist, radio personality and public speaker. She is has written 5 books and hundreds of articles on a variety of subjects including, lynching, black farmers, food security, alternative energy, economics and politics. She is published in the US, Great Britain and India. Her articles have been read into the Congressional Record and used by home schoolers in New Zealand. Ms. Davis has conducted seminars and presentations on black farmers and the plight of farm women at universities and museums. Her book, Land, Legacy and Lynching: Building the Future in Black America has been cited in several doctoral dissertations.
Her author website is: http://www.lulu.com/davis4000_2000
She may be reached at: davis4000_2000 [at] yahoo.com