When rainfall gauges were vandalized in Colorado and Kansas, a gang of farmers collected millions, and got caught

Artem Beliaikin via Sunsplash

Raindrops kept falling on the land, but just like the guy whose feet were too big for his bed, nothing seemed to fit …

Some version of the line from that 1969 B.J. Thomas tune — “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” — may have been going through the minds of the National Weather Service staff in Pueblo, Colorado, 10 years ago. In a June report by Chris Bennett in Farm Journal’s AgWeb Magazine, Meteorologist in Charge Jennifer Stark described it like this: “The precipitation data we were seeing made no sense to us. We’d watch radar with storms moving over southeast Colorado, and we had weather stations tabulating data hourly, but they’d often report no precipitation.”

Ahh, but there was someone else singing a stanza of that tune. In fact, a gang of someones. A group of fearless farmers did them some talking with the sun, and said they didn’t like the way he got things done, so they faked the burn.

To the NWS staff, Bennett explained, “rain appeared to fall everywhere” except into their rain gauges. “We started having weather observers calling and saying they were having trouble with their gauges,” Stark said. “Our technicians would go take a look and find unbelievably odd things.” Things like funnels siliconed, bowls tipped, wires cut, parts shotgunned, bolts loosened.

It was all part of a scheme to collect millions of dollars worth of federal crop insurance benefits. After doing about $11,000 in damage to these gauges, across portions to two states, Kansas and Colorado, Patrick Esch and Ed Dean Jagers managed to prove that their properties were suffering from extreme drought and collect $6.5 million. 

Like in all good true crime stories, in the end the duo and their cohorts were caught. They turned on each other. There were bribes and threats in emails and notes from girlfriends. One was wired up. One was imprisoned and then escaped, eventually found dead and rotting under mysterious circumstances. But crime paid for him, or at least for his estate, which got $500,000 in payment for his cooperation.

This was a particularly unusual agricultural fraud scheme but it was not singular. According to Bennett’s report, “crop insurance fraud echoes over certain counties and regions around the nation. Tobacco deception in east Kentucky and North Carolina; prevent plant in the Mississippi Delta; citrus schemes in Florida; and other crops according to locale.”

Sprawling visa scandal continues to embarrass small towns in Louisiana. Three law officers are among the defendants.

Authorities uncovered the alleged scheme while investigating 
a 'pattern of inconsistencies in U-visa applications.' (HS photo)

Three lawmen, an elected marshal, a Subway shop owner and foreign nationals with cash and a bent for staying in the U.S. allegedly spent nearly a decade manufacturing false police reports of burglaries to help foreign nationals stay in the U.S. 

Most recently, a federal judge "delayed a March trial date and hasn’t set a new one," reports Joe Barrett of The Wall Street Journal. "Locals wish the whole thing would blow over."

Residents from a smattering of small towns in southwestern Louisiana had "endured an 'unusual concentration of armed robberies of people who were not from Louisiana,' then-acting U.S. Attorney Alexander Van Hook said at a news conference last summer."  

"He then delivered the punchline: 'In fact, the armed robberies never took place.'"

How does that happen? It went something like this: The Subway shop owner, Chandrakant 'Lala' Patel, would "allegedly connect with crime 'victims' looking to stay in the U.S.," Barrett writes. "He would then turn to one of the law-enforcement officials to draw up paperwork for crimes that never happened." The foreign nationals, who posed as crime victims, would then apply for U visas, which "allow certain crime victims to remain in the U.S."

Authorities allege the scheme worked for almost a decade and netted the five men $5,000 per foreign national "helped" by the crime reports, which in turn allowed hundreds of foreign nationals to stay in the U.S. based on false claims. Barrett reports, "Investigators with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spurred the multi-agency probe in July 2024 after uncovering a pattern of inconsistencies in U-visa applications."

Meanwhile, residents in the rural towns of Oakdale, Glenmora and Forest Hill, where the indicted men live or worked, have been shocked by the allegations. Barrett adds, "Months later, locals still talk about the scandal in hushed voices, wary of drawing more attention to their towns."  

Does SNAP need tweaks to prevent fraud and abuse, or a complete overhaul?

Opinions on the degree of fraud in SNAP vary.
(Adobe Stock photo)

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program provides a lifeline for Americans who struggle to afford enough groceries to survive. The program is critical to rural communities where one in seven rural households relies on SNAP, according to Food Research & Action Center 2025 research.

Despite its importance to millions of Americans, the SNAP system, formally known as food stamps, is considered by the Trump administration to be fraught with fraud and errors that cost American taxpayers millions each year. 

Trump appointees tend to see SNAP fraud as a pervasive problem "perpetrated by organized criminal organizations, individual recipients and retailers willing to break the laws for profit," reports Geoff Mulvihill of The Associated Press. "Some experts agree that SNAP fraud is a major problem."

The sheer size of SNAP spending means taxpayers should expect some losses from errors and fraud. Christopher Bosso, a professor at Northeastern University, who published a book on SNAP, told Mulvihill, "If you’re spending $100 billion on anything, you’re going to have some leakage."

Despite various levels of fraud-prevention and detection investments at the federal and state levels, there are many ways SNAP can be misused. "Organized crime groups put skimmers on EBT readers to get information used to make copies of the benefit cards and steal the allotments of recipients," Mulvihill explains. Crime groups also steal identities and use them to receive benefits. Other times, recipients sell their card benefits.

Mark Haskins and Haywood Talcove, executives at LexisNexis Risk Solutions Government, which helps design fraud-prevention strategies, both "believe fraud costs significantly more than the USDA’s $9 billion estimate," Mulvihill reports. Haskins told AP, "The system is corrupt. It doesn’t need a fix here and there, it needs a complete overhaul."

Researchers and supporters often refer to SNAP fraud as "troublesome," Mulvihill writes. But they don't see program misuse as "massive" enough to require a total overhaul.

Although SNAP fraud data isn't readily available in any public repository where Americans can evaluate it, an April 2025 survey of 1,000 registered U.S. voters commissioned by The Food Industry Association found that 19% of Americans believe that SNAP benefits should be cut due to fraud and abuse, while 21% think people should receive SNAP because they need help. Overall, 64% of respondents had a favorable opinion of SNAP.

Dollar stores are fastest-growing food retailers, doubling their rural share; N.C. fines biggest chain for overcharging

UPDATE, Jan. 31: North Carolina has fined more Dollar General stores, along with Family Dollar, Circle K, Target, Walmart and 7-Eleven, The Charlotte Observer reports.

Dollar stores are a help for rural families, but consumers need
to be watchful at checkout. (Photo by Bob Bawdy, Tri-City Herald)

Rural town, two-lane road, open swaths of land on either side, some homes, a small post office and . . . a dollar store. Of course, there's a dollar store! Researchers have "found that dollar stores are now the fastest-growing food retailers in the contiguous United States—and have doubled their share in rural areas," reports Tufts University in Boston, where the researchers work. "Households with more purchases at dollar stores also tend to be lower-income and headed by people of color." The study was published Jan. 19 in the American Journal of Public Health.

The study, "which the researchers believe is the first to look at this trend over the past 10 years, could have meaningful implications for nutrition policy. Food and beverages stocked by dollar stores are typically lower in nutrients and higher in calories, while only a small percentage of such shops carry fresh produce and meats," Tufts says. "Their growing footprint, especially in the remote South, is also important: These regions already have higher baseline levels of obesity and food insecurity."

Wenhui Feng, the study's first author, said “Dollar stores play an increasingly important role in household food purchases, yet research on them is lacking. Many localities have established policies such as zoning laws aiming to slow dollar store expansion even though we don’t fully understand the role that they play. Our study is one of the first to use nationally representative data to see the role of dollar stores at the household level.”

The study confirms that rural towns and dollar stores go hand in glove. Researchers Wenhui Feng and Elina T. Page "analyzed how Americans use dollar stores to access food by analyzing food-purchase data from the IRI Consumer Network. The data captured purchases from 2008 until 2020. . . . In general, as people’s income goes up, they spend less of their budget at dollar stores. . . . In rural and low-income areas, people spend on average more than five percent of their food budget at dollar stores.  . . . rural non-Hispanic Black households spend 11.6 percent of their food budgets in dollar stores. Households in the rural South also spend in large numbers."

“The South is a hot spot,” said Sean Cash, food economist and senior author of the study. “The dollar-store business model originated in the South. They have more distribution centers there, and there’s also more consumer demand.”

The chain is not without its problems. North Carolina fined Dollar General Corp. for over-charging customers at the register. In Ohio, Attorney General Dave Yost is seeking a temporary restraining order against the company, reports Kevin P. Curran of Seeking Alpha: "Yost said that the discount retailer has habitually charged higher prices at registers than advertised on shelves. This trend has continued despite his filing of a suit against the chain in November."

Kentucky newspaper offers $3,000 for proof of vote buying

A newspaper in an Eastern Kentucky county that has been notorious for vote buying is offering a cash reward of $3,000 for evidence of the illegal act. The weekly Salyersville Independent made the offer in a full-page ad last week.

"Owner Ritt Mortimer says it wasn’t a decision he came to lightly," reports Kelsey Souto of WKYT-TV in Lexington.

Mortimer told Souto, “It’s of my opinion that every election of my 51 years has involved vote buying in Magoffin County, either to a small or very large degree at times, depending on the races involved, the money, the other factors.”

Souto reports, "He says new technology is making it easier than ever to record video or audio that could be used to prosecute individuals. It’s his way of trying to protect democracy in his hometown, but it will take a committed effort from everyone."

Typically, votes in rural Kentucky are bought through use of mailed absentee ballots, and sometimes through machine absentee voting that can be subject to manipulation. Magoffin County has long been a leader in the use of absentee voting; in the 2010 primary election, 17 percent of the vote came from absentee ballots; 7.7% of the total came from mailed-in absentees. The statewide shares were 4.3% and 1.6%, respectively.

GAO: USDA pandemic farmer-assistance program lacked anti-fraud safeties; over 1/2 of audited claims lacked backup

In 2020 and 2021, the Agriculture Department's Farm Service Agency distributed $31 billion in aid through the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program to more than 950,000 farmers and ranchers to help offset losses and increased costs in the pandemic. But the FSA didn't adequately guard against fraudulent claims, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

"We found problems in the process the Farm Service Agency used to review the claims the producers submitted for payment—potentially making it harder to identify payment errors and fraud," says the report from the auditing arm of Congress. "We reviewed the claims of 90 producers, and over half didn't provide support for their payments."

The report recommends the FSA do four things to better guard against fraudulent claims:

• Conduct more spot checks of CFAP payments and try to focus more on claims for large payments and claims involving commodities FSA generally doesn't cover.
• Issue guidance directing the agency to identify factors that county offices should consider when choosing producers for spot checks.
• Direct agency officials who conduct spot checks to seek proof generated by third parties or, if that's not available, document why self-generated proof from the producer was acceptable.
• Direct state offices to monitor the quality of county offices' spot checks to ensure their accuracy.

AP probe of vote-fraud claims wins Public Service prize in Sigma Delta Chi Awards; weekly papers can publish it

Screenshot of interactive graphic by The Associated Press showing analysis of votes in six states

The Associated Press's comprehensive investigation of vote-fraud claims in the six battleground states that decided the 2020 presidential election won the top award for Public Service Journalism in the 2021 Sigma Delta Chi Awards of the Society of Professional Journalists.

At the request of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog, AP is allowing non-member weekly newspapers to publish the mainbar and other stories, which are still timely, given the congressional hearings into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Other SDX Public Service awards went to Maine Public Radio for its reports on health-care mistreatment in the state prison and to KETK of Tyler, Texas, for "A Parent's Guide to Mental Health."

Jan. 6 must be remembered by all, and truth must be told; AP story on vote-fraud investigation is available to weeklies

By Al Cross
Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

If you edit or publish a newspaper in the U.S., please think about your Jan. 6 edition (the publication date for many if not most weeklies). Will it have anything about what happened last Jan. 6?

Please allow me, a former editor and manager of rural weeklies, to suggest that it should.

Yes, the national news media will be full of remembrances and recriminations what happened at the U.S. Capitol that day, so you may think you don't need to say anything. I think you do.

The riot, assault or insurrection (take your pick), an attempt to disrupt or even prevent the certification of the presidential election clearly and fairly won by Joe Biden, was driven by then-President Trump's lie that the election was stolen from him. I say "lie" because there is plenty of evidence that Trump knew the truth but chose to repudiate it, on the longshot hope that he could remain in office.

Think about that. The president of our country violated his oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." We can argue about how close he came to his self-coup, but there's no doubt he stood by and let the deadly violence continue for hours, and the evidence indicates that he played an active role in fostering it. Some Republicans voted to impeach and convict him for it.

All this deserves comment from you because millions of Americans, and much of your audience, believe The Big Lie. National polls show that 70 to 75 percent of Republicans believe Biden won the election through fraud. Such a belief undermines faith in our democratic system and lends support to those who like Trump's unconstitutional, undemocratic, authoritarian approach. In one poll, 40% of Republicans said they could imagine circumstances that justify violence against the government.

Many of these people are your readers. Their minds are unlikely to be changed by any piece of writing, but false beliefs that are not confronted with the facts will continue to fester.

Each newspaper's audience is unique, so I wouldn't presume to tell you how to write such an editorial or column. If you don't want to express an opinion, you could republish the story that The Associated Press published last month, after its months-long investigation "of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by former President Donald Trump has found fewer than 475 — a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election."

The AP doesn't usually allow non-subscribers to republish its material, but it is doing so in this case. All the wire service asks is that you include links to the story and to the sidebar that gives details of AP's investigations in each state. The request for publication of links does not apply to PDF versions of print editions. And if you use the story, please tell us; the AP folks would like to know.

Far too little fraud to make a difference in election, AP finds; it allows non-subscribing weeklies to republish story

Screenshot of one Associated Press chart of votes by state; for other states, click here.

By Christina A. Cassidy
The Associated Press (republished with permission; weekly newspapers without AP may republish)

An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by former President Donald Trump has found fewer than 475 — a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election.

Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.

The cases could not throw the outcome into question even if all the potentially fraudulent votes were for Biden, which they were not, and even if those ballots were actually counted, which in most cases they were not.

The review also showed no collusion intended to rig the voting. Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots.

The findings build on a mountain of other evidence that the election wasn’t rigged, including verification of the results by Republican governors.

The AP review, a process that took months and encompassed more than 300 local election offices, is one the most comprehensive examinations of suspected voter fraud in last year’s presidential election. It relies on information collected at the local level, where officials must reconcile their ballots and account for discrepancies, and includes a handful of separate cases cited by secretaries of state and state attorneys general.

Contacted for comment, Trump repeated a litany of unfounded claims of fraud he had made previously, but offered no new evidence that specifically contradicted the AP’s reporting. He said a soon-to-come report from a source he would not disclose would support his case, and insisted increased mail voting alone had opened the door to cheating that involved “hundreds of thousands of votes.”

“I just don’t think you should make a fool out of yourself by saying 400 votes,” he said.

These are some of the culprits in the “massive election fraud” Trump falsely says deprived him of a second term:

A Wisconsin man who mistakenly thought he could vote while on parole.

A woman in Arizona suspected of sending in a ballot for her dead mother.

A Pennsylvania man who went twice to the polls, voting once on his own behalf and once for his son.

The cases were isolated. There was no widespread, coordinated deceit.

The cases also underscore that suspected fraud is both generally detected and exceptionally rare.

“Voter fraud is virtually non-existent,” said George Christenson, election clerk for Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, where five people statewide have been charged with fraud out of nearly 3.3 million ballots cast for president. “I would have to venture a guess that’s about the same odds as getting hit by lightning.”

Details of AP's investigations in each state are at https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-arizona-donald-trump-voter-registration-tucson-c64bba90b8c074bf8bdfd2c751b6b0f2.

Editor's note: At the request of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog, AP has agreed to allow weekly newspapers that are not AP subscribers to republish this story, along with links to it and the sidebar, linked above. That request does not apply to electronic versions of print editions. The mainbar is at https://apnews.com/article/voter-fraud-election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-7fcb6f134e528fee8237c7601db3328f.

Some local election officials buy into fraud-and-conspiracy theories; many election officials say they feel unsafe

America’s decentralized election system depends on the professionalism and integrity of local and state election officials. Now some worry that some of their colleagues have become a threat to the system.

In Grand Junction, Colo., Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters and her top deputy have allegedly embraced debunked right-wing conspiracy theories about elections. In April she required her employees to attend an after-hours gathering and listen to a speech by well-known conspiracist Douglas Frank. Also: "Over the course of the past month, in a lawsuit filed by the state’s top elections official, Peters and her deputy have been accused of sneaking someone into the county elections offices to copy the hard drives of Dominion Voting Systems machines," Emma Brown reports for The Washington Post. "Those copies later surfaced online and in the hands of election deniers. The local district attorney, state prosecutors and the FBI are investigating whether criminal charges are warranted."

UPDATE, Oct. 14: Peters and her deputy "cannot be involved in the administration of her county’s November election, a judge ruled Wednesday," Alex Burness of The Denver Post reports. "This means that former Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams will oversee Mesa County elections this year. He was appointed by the Mesa County commissioners, under a temporary agreement that pays him $180 an hour. The commissioners supported Griswold’s suit."

Now that the audit of Arizona's Maricopa County ballots has failed to turn up evidence of fraud, conspiracists are looking to Peters' report, which she says she commissioned because it proves election irregularities. "The report, which Peters’ attorney, Scott Gessler, also included as part of defending her and Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley [from state efforts] to block the two from overseeing the fall elections, alleges that nearly 29,000 election files were deleted during a routine upgrade of the county’s now-decertified election equipment," Charles Ashby reports for Grand Junction's Daily Sentinel.

"I’ve always worried, working in this space, about people who want to harm our elections or sabotage them from the outside — the foreign actors trying to hack elections," Mike Beasley, a lobbyist for the Colorado County Clerks Association, told Brown. "I’ve never until now had to worry about what goes on on the inside. And now we’ve crossed that threshold."

Recent polling from The Brennan Center for Justice found that one in three election officials feel unsafe in their job, and one in five are worried about death threats. In recent months, Donald Trump "has endorsed several proponents of the 'big lie' to become secretaries of state in key battlegrounds. And experienced election administrators at the local level have been fleeing their jobs amid skyrocketing stress and threats to their personal safety," Brown reports.

Blackjewel bankruptcy motion, apparently denied, would dodge mine cleanup laws, abandon miners' medical claims

A judge has apparently denied a proposal to shift Blackjewel, LLC's bankruptcy from reorganization to liquidation, a shift that would have allowed the coal company to dodge its responsibility to clean up abandoned mines and pay workers' compensation for medical bills. On Nov. 25, Blackjewel lawyers motioned to convert the bankruptcy from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7. "That would mean that instead of exiting bankruptcy as a new company with less debt, Blackjewel L.L.C. would effectively cease to exist," Sydney Boles reports for Ohio Valley ReSource.

"Blackjewel had 1,100 employees at its Appalachian mines and about 600 at surface-mining operations in Wyoming," The Lane Report reports. "At the time of its bankruptcy filing, Blackjewel owed about $146 million in unpaid taxes and also owed workers unpaid wages and retirement funding." The company made national headlines in 2019 after laid-off miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, blocked a coal train from leaving for months because the bankrupt company had not paid them for recent work.

Dec. 17 was the deadline to file objections to the company's plan to liquidate. A wide range of environmental and community groups did so, along with the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and federal creditors, Matt Hepler and Molly Moore report for The Appalachian Voice. At a hearing that day, Judge Benjamin Kahn denied Blackjewel's motion to shift to Chapter 7. 

It's "pretty common" for companies to shift to Chapter 7 "when they're struggling like Blackjewel is," University of Chicago School of Law assistant professor and coal bankruptcy expert Joshua Macey told Boles.

One reason Blackjewel may have been struggling so much: its former CEO, Jeff Hoops, was allegedly defrauding the company. Blackjewel lawyers filed a civil suit against Hoops on Dec. 10, accusing Hoops of making tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent transactions, Boles reports.

Ga. nursing-home scheme may cost taxpayers $76 million

A federal investigation said the owner of a Georgia nursing home chain improperly used a legal loophole to score $300 million in bonus payments for his chain. That could cost Georgia taxpayers $76 million, Max Blau reports for Georgia Health News, in partnership with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network. 

Twenty years ago, Ronnie Rollins, who owned a for-profit chain of nursing homes, thought of an unorthodox way to qualify for bonus Medicaid payments meant to go to non-profit nursing homes. By having non-profit partners apply for bonus payments, Rollins believed he could convince federal officials that the non-profits owned the agencies, Blau reports.

Because the idea pushed the limits of the law, Rollins asked the Georgia Department of Community Health for approval. The department agreed, as long Rollins gave the department a portion of the bonus payments; officials "hoped to use the money to help stabilize Medicaid reimbursement rates for providers across the state," Blau reports.

Over the next 20 years, Rollins built one of the state's largest non-profit health-care networks, today called Community Health Services of Georgia, and brought in about $300 million in bonus payments. In the 2017 fiscal year, CHSGa brought in over $650 million in total revenue, Blau reports.

Federal officials say Rollins' workaround threatens the state's ability to collect Medicaid funds. In 2014, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ruled that some of Rollins' bonus payments were inappropriate; payments under the program have halted, and CMS is seeking $76 million in repayment from the state. The state has appealed, but if it fails, taxpayers will be on the hook for repaying the money.

Since Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to the chain halted six years ago, the nursing homes have reported below-average staffing levels, more than twice the average deficiencies as the average nursing home in Georgia, and the chain has been fined more than $1.2 million for violating patient-safety standards, according to the GHN and ProPublica investigation. The chain's 55 nursing homes also have a 4.9% covid-19 death rate, compared with the statewide average death rate of 3.3% for nursing homes.

Miami entrepreneur, others indicted in alleged $1.4 billion scheme to route lab tests to rural hospitals for higher pay

Miami entrepreneur Jorge Perez and nine others have been indicted for allegedly scamming insurers by fraudulently routing lab services bills through rural hospitals that are allowed to charge higher rates. Perez owned, co-owned, had a financial stake in, or helped manage over a dozen hospitals, but most have since declared bankruptcy or closed.

"The indictment, filed in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, Florida, alleges Perez and the other defendants sought out struggling rural hospitals and then contracted with outside labs, in far-off cities and states, to process blood and urine tests for people who never set foot in the hospitals. Insurers were billed using the higher rates allowed for the rural hospitals," Lauren Weber and Barbara Ostrov report for Kaiser Health News. "Perez and the other defendants took in $400 million since 2015, according to the indictment. Many of the hospitals run or managed by Perez’s Empower companies have since failed as they ran out of money when insurers refused to pay for the suspect billing. Half of the nation’s rural hospital bankruptcies in 2019 were affiliated with his empire."

The insurers may not be the only possible victims. A former employee at one of Perez's hospitals told KHN that "money was so tight under Perez’s management of her former hospital that the electricity was shut off at least twice and staffers had to bring in their own supplies," Weber and Ostrov report. "She said she is owed about $12,000 in back pay, as well as money for uncovered dental expenses and a workplace injury that would have been covered had employees’ insurance or workers’ compensation premiums been paid."

Quick hits: PG&E pleads guilty to 84 deaths in 2018 fire

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

North Dakota is in an economic crunch because of pandemic fallout on oil and agriculture. That bodes ill for other less financially stable states. Read more here.

Nurse shortages in rural areas can hinder covid-19 fight. Read more here.

Murray Energy's bankruptcy still casts a shadow on coal's economic viability. Read more here.

Rural Oregon leaders consider revolt against covid-19 stay-at-home orders. Read more here.

PG&E pleads guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter from deaths that happened during the November 2018 Camp Fire. Read more here.

Blackjewel LLC has filed suit against its former president, claiming he transferred $34 million to a family business and a family-run subsidiary trust about six months before the company filed for bankruptcy. Read more here.

Execs at Pilgrim's Pride and Claxton Poultry Farms indicted in alleged price-fixing scheme; others could be charged

"The chief executive of one of the country’s largest chicken producers was indicted on a price-fixing charge on Wednesday along with three other current and former executives at companies that supply chicken to groceries and restaurants across the United States," Cade Metz reports for The New York Times. "The indictment, by a federal grand jury in United States District Court in Denver, alleges that senior executives at Pilgrim’s Pride, based in Colorado, and Claxton Poultry Farms in Georgia fixed prices and rigged bids from 2012 to 2017. The charges are the first in a still-open Justice Department investigation involving several other major chicken producers."

The DOJ began investigating U.S. meat processors in recent weeks after farmers and ranchers complained that processors have been paying them extremely low prices for their livestock, even though meat prices (especially beef) surged for buyers, Leah Nylen and Liz Crampton report for Politico.

Class-action lawsuit filed against T-Mobile and others over fake ringtones on calls to rural areas

A group of local telephone companies have filed a class-action lawsuit against T-Mobile because of the carrier's previous practice of inserting fake ring tones in some calls to rural areas, which misled many to believe their calls were going through. T-Mobile paid a $40 million fine in 2018 as part of a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission, Bevin Fletcher reports for Fierce Wireless, a wireless industry publication.

"However, the proposed class action lawsuit, filed Friday in an Illinois federal court by Indiana-based Craigville Telephone Company, which does business as AdamsWells Internet Telecom TV, and Minnesota-based Consolidated Telephone Company, asserts the FCC consent decree did nothing to compensate local carriers for harms from T-Mobile’s 'deceptive practices,' arguing it violated the Communications Act, among others, and seeks a judgement of at least $700 million," Fletcher reports.

The lawsuit also names Chicago-based intermediate provider Inteliqunet in allegations of wire fraud and racketeering. According to the suit, the company wanted to reduce expenses on access charges, which it pays to local phone companies for using their networks to terminate calls made by T-Mobile subscribers, Fletcher reports. Inteliqunet, T-Mobile, and several unnamed companies are accused of conspiring to deter or prevent customers from making high-cost phone calls (such as those in rural areas) by strategies such as forcing failed calls. 

"The new lawsuit comes as the operator awaits a significantly more visible court case to get started. Next month the trial to decide T-Mobile’s pending merger with Sprint will kick off, unless a settlement is reached with the more than dozen state AGs suing to block the deal," Fletcher reports. "In its efforts to promote the merger, T-Mobile has pledged to expand wireless coverage, particularly in rural areas." A coalition of rural telecommunications companies and lobbying groups opposes the merger, and the Communications Workers of America has said that T-Mobile hurt rural customers in Iowa after acquiring a major carrier in the state.

Kentucky tobacco farmer latest convicted of crop-insurance fraud; nearly half a million dollars, and it's not the biggest

A Central Kentucky tobacco farmer pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to a charge of conspiring to file false claims on crop-insurance policies totaling $480,000. Keith Foley "claimed that he grew less tobacco than he actually produced in 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2015 so that he could get an insurance payment based on the lower yield, according to his plea agreement," Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

According to the agreement, Foley sold some tobacco under other people's names, and under separate hail-insurance policies, he submitted false claims. A crop adjuster helped Foley submit the false reports in exchange for part of Foley's insurance payout, Estep reports.

"Authorities have charged several people with crop-insurance fraud in Central Kentucky in recent years," Estep notes. One "faces sentencing in September on charges from an indictment alleging he grossed $2.6 million through fraudulent claims; and four men who farmed in Bourbon and Nicholas counties, who face trial in September."

Column: W.Va. town suffered after paper closed and local officials weren't held accountable during flood recovery

Andy Prutsok

Andy Prutsok, publisher of the Miles City Star in Montana, wrote a column recently with a cautionary tale about how towns suffer when no local newspaper keeps officials accountable.

Prutsok's first newspaper job after college was with the News Leader in Richwood, West Virginia. Once a booming lumber town, by the time Prutsok got there in 1984, fewer than 2,000 people lived there and the town was "already a shell of its former self," he writes. The decline continued after Prutsok left, and in the late 1990s the News Leader closed.

After disastrous flooding in 2016, Richwood residents pitched in to clean up and rebuild, aided by $3.1 million in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But the state auditor found that city leaders used that disaster funding to hire themselves and friends for flood relief jobs and otherwise wasted most of the money. "As a result, the mayor, the former mayor and the city recorder are charged with embezzlement,: Prutsok writes. "The town’s police chief is accused of mishandling his state purchasing card and was fired and the town council asked the mayor to resign. The town might have to pay back over $2 million of the money received."

Though it's unclear whether the problem was corruption, or honest but overwhelmed leaders, Prutsok says the underlying problem was the absence of a local newspaper. If the News Leader were still around, and sending a reporter to cover city council, "someone, working on behalf of the citizens, would have been in attendance as these decisions were being discussed and enacted, reporting all of it to the public," Prutsok writes.

As more and more small local papers close, "considering the recent raging floods taking place in the Midwest, how many more Richwoods are going to happen?" Prutsok writes.

North Carolina county again embroiled in election fraud investigation over absentee ballots, a rural commodity

A rural North Carolina county is, for at least the fifth time since 2010, embroiled in accusations of election fraud. Bladen County, just south of Raleigh, is at the center of an investigation into voting irregularities in the 2018 election for the state's Ninth Congressional District. The State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement has refused to certify the results of the election, which Republican Mark Harris apparently won by 905 votes over Democrat Dan McCready, Brian Murphy, Carli Brosseau, and Anna Douglas report for The Charlotte Observer.

"The board has scheduled a hearing later this month to hear evidence about voting irregularities with absentee ballots in Bladen and Robeson counties," the Observer reports. McCrae Dowless, a contractor who worked for Harris, allegedly contributed to the voter fraud. In both the primary and general elections, Harris received a suspiciously high percentage of mail-in absentee votes from Bladen County. A Democratic candidate for whom Dowless worked in 2010 also got far more mail-in votes than his opponent, the Observer reports.

Some voters say Dowless or those working for him collected their absentee ballots, which is illegal. The ballots could have been changed before submission or discarded if not favorable to the desired candidate.

"Treating absentee ballots as a valuable commodity to be sold and brokered is a long-standing problem in poor areas of the rural South and Appalachia," said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog.

Hospital management companies sued for Medicare billing schemes at five rural Oklahoma hospitals

Two hospital-management companies have been sued for allegedly fraudulent billing schemes run through five rural Oklahoma hospitals. Small rural hospitals are tempting targets for health-care companies looking to make extra money. It works like this: Medicare and some insurers reimburse hospitals for laboratory services at higher rates to help them stay open, so a company might buy a struggling rural hospital or sign up to manage it for a fee, and issue bills for laboratory services through that hospital, even if the lab services were done elsewhere.

Insurance giant Aetna has filed suit against People's Choice Hospitals, a management company that in May 2016 bought Newman Memorial Hospital in Shattuck, Okla. The hospital believed it had been tricked into an illegal billing scheme and sued People's Choice; the case was settled out of court. Aetna's lawsuit alleges fraud that it says cost it millions, Meg Wingerter reports for The Oklahoman.

Health Acquisition Co. is involved in several different lawsuits stemming from its billing practices at four hospitals it had a controlling interest in: Drumright Regional Hospital, Fairfax Community Hospital, Prague Community Hospital, and Haskell County Community Hospital. All four left Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma's provider network in February after the insurance company objected to their billing practices, Wingerter reports in a different article for The Oklahoman. 

One lawsuit names Empower HMS, a management company that shares ownership with HAC; lawsuits in other Florida and Missouri accuse Empower HMS owner Jorge Perez of fraud and other illegal conduct because of billing schemes. Perez has a stake in HAC and was once an executive in People's Choice, Wingerter reports.