On top of serving an 11-year prison sentence in California after a $246 million wire fraud scheme, former eastern Washington rancher Cody Allen Easterday may be permanently banned from commodity trading and pay a $1 million fine.
Easterday was sued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on March 31, 2021 for alleged commodities fraud, and making false statements to a registered entity.
On Tuesday, a consent order was signed by Easterday and filed in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Washington. According to various news sources, Easterday agreed to a permanent ban from trading, but the ban does not include the business entity Easterday Ranches.
Cody Easterday’s case is more prevalently known for his 265,000 head “ghost herd” that only existed on paper. By pencil whipping his paperwork, Eaterday was able to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars from companies.
Everything began crashing down on Easterday when Tyson took a closer look at their inventory in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. After finding a record number of cattle on inventory, the company got suspicious.
In March 2021, Easterday pleaded guilty to wire fraud for the charges on approximately 265,000 head of cattle that simply did not exist, according to the Department of Justice’s news release. Chief Judge Bastian ordered Easterday to pay $244,031,132 in restitution and imposed a three-year period of supervised release after he is out of federal prison.
At Easterday’s sentencing, Bastian remarked this case involves “the biggest theft or fraud I’ve seen in my career — and the biggest I ever hope to see.” He further said to Easterday that “you destroyed” the very “empire you spent so much time building. It all came to a collapse because of what you have done.”
After building one of the largest farming and ranching operations in the Northwest, Easterday was forced to sell off the empire. AgriNorthwest purchased the property for $210 million.
»Related: Convicted ‘ghost cattle’ schemer Easterday again sues Tyson
