(Sioux City)– The former manager of a northwest Iowa grain cooperative will serve three months in federal prison after pleading to one count of conspiracy to commit a prohibited grain practice. 76-year-old Kenneth Ehrp of Dakota Dunes, South Dakota was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court.
As part of a plea deal, Ehrp admitted he had been the General Manager at a large, federally licensed grain facility headquartered in Sioux Center and that he and others were involved in a scheme in which oats were mixed in with soybeans and sold as soybeans.
Upon learning of the conspiracy, the USDA inspected grain bins at the cooperative’s various locations in Iowa and South Dakota. Court documents say of the nearly 88,000 bushels of grain in the bins at those sites, the bins actually contained only 34,354 bushels of soybeans, even though all of the bins had been certified as strictly soybeans.
Ehrp was also fined $50,000 along with nearly $4,100 in court costs and must serve a one-year term of supervised release following the jail time.
A co-conspirator, Calvin Diehl, also received a three month jail sentence in February.
