A Billings, Montana, cattle rancher who admitted defrauding the Bureau of Land Management of fees in a grazing scheme has been sentenced.
Gene John Klamert, 71, pleaded guilty in January to mail fraud.
Klamert’s charges center on fraud regarding the ownership and number of cattle he was grazing. He has been sentenced to four years of probation, fined $35,000, and ordered to pay $143,714 restitution, U.S. Attorney Jesse Laslovich said.
The government alleged in court documents that, between 2017 and 2020, Klamert held a BLM grazing permit that allowed him to graze his cattle on public land near Winnett.
The permit authorized Klamert to graze cattle he owned for a low monthly base rate compared to private grazing fees, typically 10 times higher or more. Klamert’s BLM permit also authorized him to graze other people’s cattle, but he was required to report them and pay a surcharge for every head of cattle he grazed that he did not personally own.
BLM first discovered Klamert underreporting cattle in 2017. When confronted, Klamert admitted grazing 100 cattle that did not belong to him and that he did not report.
According to a news release, Klamert allegedly grazed at least 620 cattle that he failed to report and avoided paying the required surcharge. Before the next grazing season, BLM reminded Klamert that he must report other people’s cattle he intended to graze and pay a surcharge for each.
The BLM alleged that Klamert ignored their warnings and continued misreporting cattle for the next three seasons. To hide the cattle and avoid the surcharge, Klamert submitted to the BLM fake bills of sale purporting to have purchased 1,515 head of cattle between 2018 and 2020 that he reports indicate he did not own and never purchased.
The fraudulent bills of sale enabled Klamert to avoid paying $65,612 in surcharge fees. Klamert also defrauded the BLM by continuing to graze other people’s cattle that he never reported.
Klamert grazed over 2,000 cattle that the BLM says he did not report, avoiding an additional $78,884 in surcharges.
The fraud case includes an amount due to the BLM of a total of $144,497 after Klamert paid back $782 after a reprimand in 2017, bringing the fraud loss to $143,714.
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