Thousands of cattle seized in alleged scam

Iowa’s seized thousands of cattle on farms around the state, in what could be an investment scheme.The state of Iowa has taken control of several thousand cattle on farms around southern Iowa, while it looks into charges that more than one investor may have paid for the same animals. State attorney General Tom Miller says the state requested and got receivership after complaints about an investment program.Investors’ money was to be used to buy cattle that would be fed, sold, and profits returned to investors but it seems the same cattle were allocated to more than one investor. Miller says “United Livestock Services” has been in business for twenty or thirty years in southern Iowa and northern Missouri, and apparently for much of that time was on the level. But investors fear there may have been as many as 200-thousand fewer cattle than they were told.That’s the core of the consumer-fraud action, money not used for what investors thought it was doing. Investors want their money, and the case could mean losses as well for farmers who were raising the cattle, banks that loaned money to investors. The Omaha World Herald newspaper reports today that losses could total 100-million dollars.