Farmers Who Destroyed Spuds Among Those Who’ve Creatively Defrauded Feds

A handful of farmers have found creative ways to defraud federal farm programs in recent years. There was the North Carolina couple who faked hail damage to their crops by telling workers to throw ice cubes and scatter mothballs onto a tomato field; the South Dakota couple who fleeced the government by collecting $1 million in wool payments for sheep they didn’t own; and the Texas man who spent one year in prison for filing a claim for cotton he never planted.