Iowa farmer sentenced to 13 years for charges including fraud, identity theft and stalking

A farmer from Iowa was sentenced to 13 years in federal court Thursday on charges including stealing government funds and crop insurance fraud.

Tanner Seuntjens, 33, defrauded taxpayers of over $1.7 million in subsidies, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa said in a release. He pleaded guilty to the aforementioned charges, along with charges of aggravated identity theft and stalking, in September.

Between June 2020 and June 2021, Seuntjens falsely claimed to own thousands of pigs in applications for more than $1.5 million in Coronavirus Food Assistance Program subsidies.

He forged signatures on the applications and submitted fake documents to the local U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency commissioners who wanted to verify the payments of said subsidies, prosecutors said.

Then, between March 2021 through April 2022, Seuntjens forged the signature of the representative of a South Dakota bank on two-party checks used as payment for grain and livestock sales at least 20 times. 

By doing this, Seuntjens deprived the bank of over $400,000 in collateral payments it was owed, money that Seuntjens spent on transfers to family, various farming costs, trips to Disney World and Cocoa Beach and cash withdrawals, prosecutors said.

In 2022 and 2023, Seuntjens underreported the yields of his crops and received over $175,000 in federal crop insurance payments that he was not actually eligible for. 

In 2023 and 2024, prosecutors said, Seuntjens defrauded agricultural suppliers by selling their collateral, and he also sold livestock and grain under a third party’s name to avoid the liens and judgments of his creditors.

Seuntjens also violated no-contact orders against a witness and victim of his agricultural fraud by going to Nebraska and putting a tracking device on their car. The order had been issued by an Iowa state court after Seuntjens assaulted the witness and put a tracking device on a minor, federal prosecutors said.

In addition to his 13-year prison sentence, Seuntjens will also have to pay $1,704,434.74 in restitution to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Following his prison sentence, he will have five years of supervised release.