{"id":43772,"date":"2014-05-16T10:31:50","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T15:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=43772"},"modified":"2014-05-16T14:26:31","modified_gmt":"2014-05-16T19:26:31","slug":"feds-investigation-continues-spud-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=43772","title":{"rendered":"Brother, Similar Scam 20 Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/SPUDSCAM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-43785\" alt=\"SPUDSCAM\" src=\"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/SPUDSCAM-300x202.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"202\" srcset=\"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/SPUDSCAM-300x202.png 300w, http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/SPUDSCAM-259x175.png 259w, http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/SPUDSCAM.png 445w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>FARGO, N.D. (AP) \u2013 Prosecutors say one of two North Dakota brothers accused of scamming the government out of $2 million in crop insurance payments orchestrated a similar scheme nearly 20 years ago \u2013 but only pocketed about $33,000.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fifty-year-old Aaron Johnson and 47-year-old Derek Johnson are accused of conspiring to receive illegal payments by intentionally destroying potatoes. They have pleaded not guilty.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Aaron Johnson pleaded guilty in a similar case in 1995. Court documents filed Friday say he falsely claimed he and his brother produced about 9,500 hundredweight of potatoes, when it was actually more than 76,000 hundredweight.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Prosecutors said Aaron Johnson obtained a book of blank scale tickets from the Northwood Elevator, falsified 21 scale tickets and submitted them to the government.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A federal public defender was not immediately available for comment.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Previously&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>FARGO, N.D. (AP) &#8211; Federal authorities have expanded the scope of their investigation into two brothers from North Dakota accused of intentionally destroying potatoes to collect crop insurance payments.<\/p>\n<p>The original indictment alleged that 50-year-old Aaron Johnson and 47-year-old Derek Johnson conspired to receive more than $800,000 in illegal payments dating back to 2006. Now the government says the potato farmers from the Cooperstown area pocketed more than $2 million in a scam that began in 2002.<\/p>\n<p>The updated indictment accuses the brothers of adding chemicals to the potato seeds so they would not grow and purposely damaging the plants with cultivators.<\/p>\n<p>The Johnsons have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and making false statements. A spokesman for the federal public defender&#8217;s office says it&#8217;s a complex case and lawyers are still reviewing the evidence.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FARGO, N.D. (AP) \u2013 Prosecutors say one of two North Dakota brothers accused of scamming the government out of $2 million in crop insurance payments orchestrated a similar scheme nearly 20 years ago \u2013 but only pocketed about $33,000. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fifty-year-old Aaron Johnson and 47-year-old Derek Johnson are accused [&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-43772","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\/43772","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=43772"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43775,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43772\/revisions\/43775"}],"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=43772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}