Modern-day cattle rustling
Exeter man held on multiple charges
A modern-day cattle rustling operation involving several victims and millions of dollars has been busted, announced Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux Thursday.
During a press conference in Visalia, the sheriff was joined by members of his staff and the district attorney’s office in announcing the arrest of Justin Tyler Greer, 36, of Exeter, on more than 10 counts of grand theft, embezzlement and investment fraud.
Greer was arrested Dec. 28, 2017 in Tarzan, Texas and brought back to Tulare County. His bail has initially been set at $1.9 million, said District Attorney Tim Ward.
Greer is accused of selling existing and non-existing cattle and bilking investors out of approximately $1.5 million dollars.
“This is 21st Century cattle rustling and embezzlement at the highest level,” Boudreaux said Thursday.
The sheriff said there were seven victims, five from California and one each from Colorado and Idaho. Four of the cattle ranches listed in the press conference are located in the hills east of Porterville and another is just north of Lindsay. In all, cattle ranches in Tulare, Kings and Kern counties were listed.
He said so far 900 head of cattle — mostly range cattle — have been recovered and there are at least 1,000 more missing.
The sheriff said there could be more victims and they are looking at more suspects.
According to Sgt. Bob Rader, the sheriff’s office cattle liaison with the Ag Crimes Unit, the case began in June of 2017 when seven victims came forward.
“Each victim identified our suspect,” said the sheriff.
Rader said the investigation included thousands of pages of documents and several financial institutions.
“Given the complexity of this case, I am proud of the amount of progress they made to get this case to this point,” Boudreaux said. “And I very much appreciate the assistance of other law enforcement agencies throughout the western United States.”
The Western way of life is a special one in Tulare County where trust in a man’s word is very much alive, he added.
“When that trust is broken, it shocks the consciousness of the community and the industry,” he said. “We, at the Sheriff’s Office, take it very seriously when one man steals another man’s cattle and commits fraud.”
He said a cowboy handshake was all which used to be needed between cattlemen, but the suspect violated that.
He said Greer, who worked for years in the cattle industry, comes from a family with a long cattle history. He said the suspect bought and sold large numbers of cattle on a regular basis as a broker and managed several herds of cattle for various people across Tulare County.
According to officials, the suspect would arrange a partnership with investors to purchase and sell cattle, but the investments were never returned.
District Attorney investigator Jeff Gilbert, who was embedded with the Sheriff’s Office on the case, said it was basically a Ponzi scheme where often no live cattle were involved.
According to the victims, Greer failed to meet his financial obligations in April and May, causing them to look closer at their business dealings with him. Two of the victims issued audits into the numbers of cattle they owned that had been managed by Greer.
Those audits showed hundreds of cattle had been stolen said officials.
Other victims in the case had invested as partners with Greer. They later learned that the cattle they had invested in either weren’t Greer’s to sell in the first place or the cattle never existed at all, Sheriff Boudreaux said. Officials said Greer “over-branded” cattle to show they were his, when he had stolen them.
During the investigation, detectives worked closely with the California Bureau of Livestock Identification Brand Unit, as well as criminal investigators with the State of Wyoming Livestock Board. Working together, detectives learned that more than 900 head of cattle had been shipped into Wyoming by Greer.
Those cattle had been illegally placed on pasture in Wyoming, Boudreaux said.
They were later recovered by investigators. The Sheriff’s investigation of Greer spawned a parallel criminal investigation by the U.S. Forest Service which is handling the investigation of the cattle Greer sent to Wyoming.
Greer was doing business through a multitude of financial institutions with various accounts within each institution. Detectives authored and served more than 25 search warrants for these accounts as well as various offices, residences and a variety of electronic devices. From these searches, detectives obtained and reviewed thousands of financial documents and associated evidence which strongly corroborated the victims’ statements and losses.
Anyone with information about this case is encouraged to contact the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office at 733-6218 or anonymously through the Tipnow Program at 725-4194 or tcso@tipnow.com.