{"id":100031,"date":"2016-05-04T09:51:08","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T14:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=100031"},"modified":"2016-05-04T09:52:03","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T14:52:03","slug":"court-upholds-convictions-spud-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=100031","title":{"rendered":"Court upholds conviction, sentence &#8220;Spud Scam&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4340\" src=\"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/justice-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"justiceTHUMB\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/>FARGO, N.D. (AP) &#8211; An appeals court has upheld the conviction and sentence of a North Dakota farmer who was found guilty of intentionally destroying potatoes to collect federal farm insurance payments.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A jury in December 2014 found Aaron Johnson, who lived near Cooperstown, guilty of conspiring to receive illegal payments and making false statements. He was sentenced to four years in prison.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Authorities say Johnson added chemicals used in septic systems to the spuds to speed up deterioration.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Johnson argued in his appeal that the government&#8217;s key witness was not credible. A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in an opinion released Wednesday that there was sufficient evidence to support the outcome.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Aaron Johnson&#8217;s brother, Derek, was convicted in the case and sentence to 1 1\/2 years in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FARGO, N.D. (AP) &#8211; An appeals court has upheld the conviction and sentence of a North Dakota farmer who was found guilty of intentionally destroying potatoes to collect federal farm insurance payments. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A jury in December 2014 found Aaron Johnson, who lived near Cooperstown, guilty of conspiring to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100031"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100033,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100031\/revisions\/100033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}