Federal investigators have unraveled a scheme among dozens of insurance agents, claims adjusters, brokers and farmers in eastern North Carolina to steal at least $100 million from the government-backed program that insures crops, The Associated Press reports.
Forty-one defendants have either pleaded guilty or reached plea agreements after profiting from false insurance claims for losses of tobacco, soybeans, wheat and corn. Often, the article says, crops weren’t damaged, and farmers used aliases to sell their written-off harvests for cash.