Two Kentucky real-estate brokers plead guilty in farmland bid-rigging case

Two Kentucky real-estate brokers have pleaded guilty to rigging bids at an auction for hundreds of acres of farmland.

Barry D. Dyer, of Warren County, and Mackie E. Shelton of Allen County pleaded guilty in federal court in Bowling Green on Wednesday, according to court documents.

The auction at issue took place in April 2018 and involved 367 acres in Allen County.

The bidding reached a point where the only participants left were Shelton and Dyer against two other men. Those men had leased the farm together to grow tobacco and wanted to buy it, according to court documents.

Dyer then approached one of the farmers and told the man to pay him and Shelton $40,000 to stop bidding, federal prosecutors said in one court document.

Someone helping conduct the auction caught wind of what was going on and angrily told Dyer to stop, saying “You need to go to church,” according to the motion.

Despite that, the farmers agreed to pay Dyer and Shelton in order to win the auction. They placed a final bid and Shelton and Dyer didn’t raise them, allowing the farmers to get the land at an “artificially suppressed price,” according to court documents.

The two men, who were not named in the federal charges, later paid Dyer and Shelton $20,000 each, according to plea agreements the two men signed.

The owner of the land alleged in a separate civil lawsuit that the actions of Dyer and Shelton cost the seller more than $150,000.

The two farmers bidding against Dyer and Shelton had been prepared to pay up to $650,400 to get the land, but got it for $492,200 after they agreed to the payoff, the lawsuit alleged.

Prosecutors agreed to recommend a maximum sentence of 18 months and a $20,000 fine for each man. They are to be sentenced next year.

The indictment in the case said Dyer and Shelton were licensed principal auctioneers and real-estate brokers in Kentucky and licensed auctioneers in Tennessee at the time they conspired at the 2018 sale.

The U.S. Department of Justice noted their guilty pleas in a news release.

“American farmers are part of the backbone of our country’s economy, and they deserve to run their businesses in a fair market, untainted by corruption,” Luis Quesada, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, said in the release.