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It’s the talk of Pope County in west-central Minnesota. Barry Erickson, a 36-year-old farmer from Glenwood, has been charged with seven counts of theft and five counts of cattle rustling in what is best described as a cow-kiting scheme.
It is alleged that Erickson would lease cows from area farmers, a common-enough practice, but then he would sell the cows belonging to one person and cover the moooovement of the herd by leasing a few more cows from someone else. That way, each time a farmer came by Erickson’s barn, he’d see a bunch of cows and have no reason to worry. The Pope County prosecutor thinks the matter is just another debtor-creditor situation and that the scheme is udderly criminal. The courts will decide the matter.
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