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Today, Explained

The great American cattle swindle

Today, Explained

Vox

News, Daily News, Politics

4.3 • 10.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Cody Easterday was ranching royalty in Washington state until he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for swindling two companies out of $244 million. KUOW’s Anna King — host of the Ghost Herd podcast — explains. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Reporter Anna King got a call.

0:03.0

One of my farm sources told me Anna, you got to look at this, you got to look at it now.

0:08.0

I was kind of freaked out, I hadn't heard from this guy in a couple years.

0:11.0

We meet in the parking lot, we're in the headlights, he's on the hood of the car,

0:15.0

he's going through these documents and showing me what's going on.

0:19.0

And it was the start of the battle between Easter Day and Tyson.

0:24.0

Cody Easter Day was a wildly successful cattle rancher.

0:28.0

And foods was his biggest client.

0:31.0

I discovered that Cody Easter Day had stolen $244 million from Tyson and another company

0:39.0

and that he had used fake invoices to do that.

0:44.0

Coming up in today explained the story of a ghost herd,

0:47.0

how a cattle rancher in the Pacific Northwest made up a bunch of cows

0:51.0

and in doing so, scammed more than $200 million from his clients.

0:55.0

And what his story says about modern American farming.

1:00.0

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...

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