A Kansas farmer has admitted to defrauding federal government crop insurance programs before lying in court documents when filing for bankruptcy, the Wichita Eagle reported. Trego County (Kansas) farmer Kevin W. Struss pleaded guilty Monday at a federal courthouse in Wichita to one count of federal crop insurance fraud and one count of bankruptcy fraud, court documents show. In the plea deal, prosecutors said they plan to ask the court for more than $2.1 million in restitution. That total includes more than $600,000 in insurance premium benefits, more than $1.2 million in federal crop insurance premium subsidies and more than $270,000 in administrative costs. Struss admitted in the plea agreement that in the spring of 2015 he devised a scheme to defraud the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. The plan involved making false proof-of-loss statements that under-reported his total harvested bushels of corn and grain sorghum, which is also known as milo. Those crops had been insured with an FCIC subsidy. As a result of the scheme, he was paid crop insurance benefits to which he was not entitled. Then in April 2018, Struss filed for bankruptcy. He marked that he had not transferred property to anyone in the previous two years, but in fact, Struss admitted in his guilty plea that he had transferred $470,000 to someone else within the three months before he filed for bankruptcy.
