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Sometimes, in America, the human impulse to game a system for personal profit astounds us with its creativity. We direct you to this story from CBS News over the weekend in which a couple of jamokes out west managed to devise a swindle out of how we measure rainfall.
By preventing the rain gauges from accurately measuring precipitation, the men aimed to increase the amount of money they could receive from the federal government, according to court documents.
Patrick Esch, 72, and Ed Dean Jagers, 62, both of Springfield, received short prison sentences - Esch two months and Jagers six. They also were ordered to pay a combined $3.1 million in restitution - the estimated amount of fraudulently inflated funds they received from the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. As well, they agreed to pay a combined $3.5 million to settle the allegations. The cases against Esch and Jager included civil allegations and criminal charges accusing the men of making false statements and defrauding the federal government, in addition to the physical tampering of the rain gauges.
Here's the scam that these golden-agers worked up. It involves something called the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. The crop insurance program depends on something called the Automated Surface Operating System (ASOS), a network run by the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The crooks sabotaged this system, collected crop insurance money based on flawed estimates of drought conditions, which are bad enough even if calculated honestly, God knows. And, boy howdy, did they get around.
The group allegedly damaged rain gauges located in Springfield, Ordway, La Junta, Walsh, and Ellicott, Colorado, and others in Syracuse, Coolidge, and Elkhart, Kansas. Wires were cut, funnels to rain collectors were filled with silicone, holes drilled or punched in collectors, parts of collectors were disassembled, and objects such as cake pans or pie tins were placed over the gauges during rainstorms. The incidents occurred between July 2016 and June 2017...Jager filed claims on the falsified lower precipitation measurements, thereby increasing the benefits received from his crop insurance policy. In return for their rain gauge activities, Esch and the two unidentified co-conspirators received payouts, as outlined in the plea agreements.
Unfortunately, there was no honor among the rain thieves, and here's where things get a little...dark.
Incidentally, one of the co-conspirators turned on the group and extorted Esch in particular. The unidentified male threatened to expose the entire enterprise to authorities in exchange for Esch paying the man's bond for release from jail and giving several five-figure payments to the man's girlfriend. Esch, according to his plea agreement, even shrugged off the man's admitted theft of an all-terrain vehicle from Esch in exchange for the man's silence. In August of 2023, a month before Jager and Esch reached their plea agreements with prosecutors, this unidentified male co-conspirator escaped from prison. This triggered a nationwide manhunt and caused Esch and his family "to go into hiding," as stated in a court document. Two weeks after the escape, the co-conspirator was found dead.
Incidentally, that is one hell of an "incidentally" right there.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
