A second Minnesota man has been charged with being part of a plot to defraud grain purchasers out of more than $46 million by selling grains falsely labeled as organic.
Cottonwood County farmers James C. Wolf, 65, and Adam C. Olson, 45, are both charged in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis with three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy in connection with the scheme that ran from 2014 to 2021, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced Friday.
Wolf was charged in July and has made his initial court appearance, while Olson's first hearing is scheduled for Jan. 23. Messages were left Tuesday with both men and their attorneys seeking a response to the allegations.
According to the charges:
From 2014 to 2021, Wolf repeatedly purchased non-organic corn and soybeans from a grain seller and resold them as organic. He made the transactions despite not having the required grain buyer license.
He also grew conventionally farmed crops using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, in violation of organic farming standards, and provided grain purchasers with copies of his National Organics Program certification but withheld that the grains were not organically farmed.
After Wolf's organic farming certification was revoked in 2020, Olson, who was certified, helped Wolf sell non-GMO crops falsely described as organic.
"As a result of the fraud scheme, Wolf and Olson received more than $46 million in payments from grain buyers," the charges read.
