Like all the best con artists, Randy Constant was a charmer, hard not to like.
Big hearted. Good listener. You’d never have guessed that the father of three, grandfather of five was a liar, cheat and serial philanderer who masterminded one of the biggest and longest-running frauds in the history of American agriculture.
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He made a good living buying and selling organic grain. He raised tilapia by the ton inside a former Walmart, shipping the farm-raised fish to Whole Foods and hundreds of other supermarkets nationwide.
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Constant was already being closely watched. On a humid Tuesday morning …. a line of black SUVs rolled down Oaklawn Drive and parked outside the four-bedroom, Cape Cod-style house that Constant shared with his wife, Pam.
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With the FBI’s assistance, the USDA would go on to prove that Constant was a swindler on a grand scale: More than $140 million in fraudulent sales between 2010 and 2017 for grain that was likely worth half that…. [I]n fact, his scheme stretched back further than that, to 2007 or 2006.
Constant scammed …. millions of American consumers for a decade or more. The organic beef and poultry countless Americans were eating during those years wasn’t organic after all.
Read full, original article: Missouri charmer led double life, masterminded one of the biggest frauds in farm history
