A Prosser farmer that defrauded the government out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a wheat crop insurance scam has been fined more than $600,000.
Vanessa Waldref, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, announced Wednesday that the government had received a fraud judgment of $607,000 against Rick T. Gray and Gray Farms and Cattle Co., which was registered in Prosser and operated in nearby Klickitat County.
The fraud scheme took place between 2015 and 2019, with Gray accused of submitting fraudulent claims for crop insurance, while selling hundreds of thousands of dollars more product than reported.
The USDA’s Farm Services Agency’s records reported that Gray and his companies — between 2014 and 2016 — held the largest amount of insured wheat acreage in Klickitat County, according to previous Herald reporting.
The fine announced this week was for misrepresenting more than 35,000 bushels of wheat that he sold during crop year 2015, leading to Gray fraudulently receiving about $180,000 in payments he wasn’t entitled to get, according to the news release.
The lawsuit filed in 2021 initially put the amount received in fraudulent payments at up to $540,000.
The USDA program is meant to subsidize farm owners against potential losses. Farmers can submit claims for losses due to weather and other factors.
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