If you own a feedmill or you run a company that owns truck scales then you’ll want to hear about this story. Basically, there were a few folks creating fake tickets at the scale for loads of corn that were paid for but never delivered to the actual feed mill. The result was a crime in excess of $2 million.

Hobbs worked as a scale operator and pellet mill operator at Cargill’s Butterfield feed mill from December 1999 until March 2013. When a delivery truck would arrive at the feed mill, Hobbs was responsible for weighing each truck and its contents. Once the truck was weighed, Hobbs created a scale ticket for the company that delivered the grain, corn, or feed. A copy of the scale ticket was sent to Cargill’s headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for processing and payment to the trucking company. Beisly and Bunn approached Hobbs in 2002 about creating fictitious scale tickets for non-delivered loads of corn as a way to make money and ultimately defraud Cargill. Hobbs began creating completely fictitious scale tickets for Beisly and Bunn for the delivery of loads of grain, corn, or feed that did not truly exist.

Beisly owned and operated K&B Grain. Beisly obtained contracts with Cargill for the delivery of a set number of grain loads that were supposed to deliver grain, corn, or another type of product to the Butterfield feed mill. Beisly admitted that he received numerous fictitious scale tickets from Hobbs for deliveries that were never actually made. Beisly also admitted that at least once a week, he received a fictitious scale ticket from Hobbs that claimed he had delivered a shipment of grain to the Butterfield feed mill, when in truth and fact, no such shipment or delivery was made. Shortly after the fictitious scale tickets were created by Hobbs, Beisly received a payment from Cargill. Bunn owned and operating RB Grain. Bunn was contracted through The Scoular Company to transport shipments of wheat, corn, and grain to the Cargill feed mill in Butterfield. Bunn also admitted that he received numerous fictitious scale tickets from Hobbs for deliveries that were never actually made. Once Scoular received a payment from Cargill based on the submission of a fictitious scale ticket, Scoular issued a check to Bunn based on the delivery of wheat, corn, or feed that was never delivered. Hobbs initially received $300 in kickbacks for each “ghost load,” which was later increased to $500 in cash for each “ghost load.” Cargill officials discovered the fraud when the amount of grain, corn, or feed that was being paid for was inconsistent with the amount they actually received. Over a span of nine years, this fraud scheme caused losses to Cargill of approximately $2 million.

So how do you prevent this type of behavior from happening to your business? One way is to install cameras to take photographs of a truck at various stages of a transaction is one way. The photographs or video can show whether or not a driver has positioned a truck properly. Another way is to utilize vehicle recording software such as Cardinal WinVRS or Rice Lake Transact.

Cardinal’s powerful WinVRS software keeps traffic moving over your scale by providing fast, accurate collection of data on vehicles, accounts, orders, and materials. Unique, user-defined fields allow you to easily configure the system to meet your needs. A wide range of reports are available to provide period histories, material totals, customer information and more. WinVRS’s convenient file utilities menu allows data to be exported to other applications such as accounting and materials control. NTEP legal-for-trade certified. WinVRS-TOUCH offers all the same great features as WinVRS, but comes with larger fonts and buttons for convenient touchscreen navigation. When a user enters into any WinVRS window with input prompts, an on-screen keyboard appears.

From installation and setup, to everyday transactions, data management has never been easier! Rice Lake TRANSACT® was designed to make new scale management installations or upgrades virtually effortless. Even operators with little or no computer experience are immediately comfortable with its intuitive, graphically enhanced user interface. But don’t let its simplicity fool you – TransAct serves as a powerful central database, seamlessly integrating your entire operation with transaction information. From the scale, to the office, to the customer, all relevant data is quickly and accurately generated for each step in your enterprise.