2 Colorado farmers sentenced for insurance fraud

U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan recently announced that Patrick Esch and Ed Dean Jagers of Springfield, Colorado, have agreed to pay more than $6.5 million to resolve allegations that they defrauded federal crop insurance programs by tampering with and damaging rain gauges.

One way the U.S. Department of Agriculture supports farmers and ranchers is by providing federal funding for crop insurance programs that pay indemnities when there is less than the usual amount of precipitation. Esch and Jagers concocted a scheme to defraud these insurance programs by making it appear that there was less precipitation in their area than there actually was, Finegan said.

To carry out that scheme, the members of the conspiracy, including Esch and Jagers, tampered with and damaged rain gauges in southeast Colorado between July 2016 and June 2017 to prevent those gauges from accurately measuring rainfall, Finegan said. Some of the rain gauges that were tampered with belonged to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and were operated by the National Weather Service.