(Radio Iowa) – A northeast Iowa farmer has been sentenced to over 15 years in federal prison for stealing nearly five million dollars worth of livestock and federal pandemic assistance.
Prosecutors say 54-year-old Michael Butikofer of Monona, in Clayton County, had a large operation raising cattle for investors across the U-S and he recruited employees from South Africa who were forced to live on the farm without access to clean water or even furniture. According to a news release from the U-S Attorney’s Office, Butikofer convinced eight investors to let him sell their cattle in his name — and he took over two-and-a-half MILLION dollars of the profits for his own use. He was also accused of getting more than a million dollars in emergency assistance from the U-S-D-A at the start of the pandemic for cattle he did not own — and making false claims to get a one-and-half MILLION dollar disaster loan from the S-B-A in early 2022.

Prosecutors say Butikofer made false statements about his financial condition when he filed for bankruptcy soon after getting that S-B-A loan. The U-S Attorney’s Office says Butikofer used his bankruptcy filing to dupe three migrants who’d worked for him into accepting 30 percent of the nearly quarter of a million dollars a federal court ordered Butikofer to pay them for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Last year, federal agents rescued a husband, wife and teenaged daughter from South African from Butifer’s farm. They had been living in a camper without water, electricity or heat. Then again this past April federal agents prevented other migrants recruited to work at the farm from winding up there.