Pro tip: Never trust a man who talks about his “smoking hot mom.”
Cody Easterday is a piece of work, as you undoubtedly know if you read Senior Editor Mark Friedman’s front-page article last week. Easterday is the 49-year-old rancher from southeast Washington who pleaded guilty in March to defrauding Tyson Foods Inc. of $233 million and an unidentified company of $11 million.
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To be fair, it wasn’t until his father died on Dec. 10 a few days after he confessed his scheme to Tyson executives that Easterday shared a decades-old photo of his parents on Twitter and described his mother as “smoking hot.” By then, Tyson executives were grappling with the fact that they had, over a period of years, paid hundreds of millions of dollars for cattle that didn’t exist and nonexistent feed to fatten them up. And that Easterday, in his words, “had pissed it away” trading
Send Misplaced trust is a common theme in the fraud cases I ve observed over the past two decades, as is the failure to make simple, routine checks.
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Courtesy of Franklin County, Wash.
It’s a modern-day rustling case.
A major Washington state cattle operator allegedly “fed” more than 200,000 head of cattle that didn’t exist for years. Now Tyson Fresh Meats, Inc is suing.
Tyson says in a lawsuit filed in Franklin County Superior Court this week that its losses are more than $225 million. The losses are from false cattle sales and feed costs.
“In an effort to ensure the orderly recovery of assets in the aftermath of a fraudulent scheme by Easterday Ranches, Tyson Fresh Meats is asking for a court-appointed receiver to take control of Easterday Ranches,” Tyson Fresh Meats said in an emailed statement.