Last week, in Washington, DC, I attended what is is expected to be the last hearing on the Pigford settlement–Judge Paul Friedman, presiding.

Judge Friedman has been in charge of the scandal-infested case since it was conceived during the Clinton Administration. He has overseen a process that has funneled billions of dollars to lawyers, bureaucrats and fraudsters who have never farmed a day in their lives, leaving behind many black farmers who suffered actual racial discrimination by the USDA.

Pigford is an interesting bit of legal chicanery. It works on two different levels: one a false cover story, the other the behind-the-scenes legal reality.

In order for Pigford to proceed, there needs to be a public perception that Pigford is helping poor black farmers. That is the constant public drumbeat, and it works because it plays on people’s natural sympathy with the plight of those black farmers who were, in fact, hurt by the government.

Then there’s the actual legal mechanism, including the “attempted to farm” bamboozle, through which people who were never actually farmers have come forward to claim $50,000 payouts as part of an expanded class of beneficiaries that Friedman certified. (more…)

Georgia farmer Lucious Abrams knows about Pigford fraud. He’s heard lawyers like Pigford’s mastermind Al Pires tell people that all they had to do was say the USDA threw their applications in the trash can  — a claim impossible to prove or disprove – and they could collect a $50,000 check. And thousands surely did.

Of course, Pires and the lawyers would get THEIR cut, too. And they aren’t the ones at risk of a perjury conviction. The lawyers made $40 million of your tax money, according settlement attorney Othello Cross. The total cost of these fraud filled fake famers settlements is in the billions.

And who had the toughest time collecting? The real farmers who were the victim of the government in the first place; men like Lucious Abrams.

As you can see here, Abrams is ready, willing and able to expose Al Pires. The only question is whether Darrell Issa is ready to listen. After all, Issa voted to keep Pigford funding.

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Will Senator Chuck Grassley look at THIS evidence about the massive fraud in Pigford? His office number is 202-224-3744. Please leave a comment and let us know what Grassley’s office says to you.

I want you to get a good look at attorney Al Pires, the mastermind behind four different settlements ostensibly created to aid black, women, Hispanic and Native American farmers. I’ve been telling you about the billions of dollars in fraud the settlements actually represent for months and Al Pires is an absolutely central figure in them. The settlements were his idea and he was the lead attorney who recruited other lawyers and helped create the structure of the consent decree that made it easy for people who claimed to have “attempted to farm” to collect $50,000 checks.

But Al Pires is an elusive figure, for reasons I think will be obvious as soon as you watch the video. My Pigford investigative team has known for months that getting Al Pires to talk on the record would be a dream interview and crucial to understanding the scam that’s been perpetrated on the taxpayers and the real farmers for years now. John Stossel first exposed Pires in his great Freeloaders special a few weeks ago and when he called me earlier this week and offered me the opportunity to question Al Pires myself, I realized that it represented a very rare opportunity.

So we should all thank John Stossel for giving us this chance to see and hear the man that President Obama, USDA Sec. Tom Vilsack, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus have invested so much political capital in. Meet Al Pires.

Even though this case goes back to 1999, please bear in mind that Al Pires and “Dr.” John Boyd are currently on the road right now recruiting women “farmers”. In other words, Al Pires still represents a clear and present danger to our nation’s treasury and to the interest of racial harmony. As the interview makes clear, Al Pires is a race baiter of the first order and he needs to foment a race war as a form of misdirection while he lines his own pockets.

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As I was transcribing the undercover audio we have of Tom Burrell, President of the Black Farmers Agricultural Association, Inc. speaking to an all-black audience in Monroe Louisiana this past January , something suddenly jumped out at me. I knew that Burrell was using a number of persuasive techniques such as peer pressure and stirring up feelings of racial victimization but his reason for doing so had danced around the edge of my consciousness.

Then I realized what Burrell is doing is absolutely classic confidence game behavior. Last year, I read Eric Garcia’s excellent con game novel Matchstick Men and of course I’ve seen classic 1970s con man movies like The Sting and Paper Moon. One major trick that conmen use is to get their victim – the mark — to become their “partner” in some sort of borderline unethical or illegal activity. “Hey, that guy dropped his wallet – what do you say you and I split the money, pal?” This ensures that once the victim has been fleeced, that they’re very unlikely to tell the authorities or anyone else what happened.

One way to listen to this audio is to think about the taxpayers who are being ripped off by people filing fraudulent claims that earn them a $50,000 check. That’s one of the bad things about Pigford and it obviously has affected taxpayers, both black and white.

But there’s another way to hear the audio, as well — everyone who Burrell is trying to convince and cajole into committing fraud is also a victim of Burrell’s game. His goal is to get as many people to give him $100 a year as he can and when I interviewed him, Burrell told me that the BFAA Inc. has nearly 10,000 members. Do the math and you’ll see that he is playing a very profitable game, indeed.

The first video gives a few examples of con game techniques that Tom Burrell uses on the crowd.

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There are number of factors that could lead to the Pigford scandal becoming a political issue in Iowa, of all places. The state’s demographics – about 95% Caucasian – might make this seem unlikely but it’s very interesting how many of the major political players in the Pigford scandal are from the heartland state.

1) One of the major Senate proponents of Pigford is Republican Chuck Grassley

2) The major political opponent of Pigford is Republican representative Steve King

3) USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, is also the former governor of Iowa who also served in the state legislature with Steve King. Vilsack has made Pigford a priority in his administration and has opposed any efforts to investigate fraud in the settlement.

4) Vilsack was also the fall guy in the forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod; Mrs. Sherrod has stated publicly that she believes the White House was behind her firing because she was told this by USDA Undersecretary Cheryl Cook. Vilsack has denied White House involvement. The White House and the USDA both had good reasons for not wanting publicity about Pigford and Mrs. Sherrod; she, her husband Charles and the New Communities farm that she helped manage were by far the largest single recipients of Pigford money, getting over $13 million.

5) Vilsack’s USDA also did an end run around the court decision and created their own expedited process to give money to women and Hispanic farmers — and significantly, women and Hispanics who claim to have attempted to farm. This “attempted to farm” distinction is exactly what led to significant fraud in Pigford.

6) Sec. Vilsack and Sen. Grassley have both praised “Dr.” John Boyd and have advocated using Boyd for outreach in the Pigford, women and Hispanic farmers cases. For more on John Boyd watch the segment from my documentary Pigford Blues.

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Here’s another ‘rough cut’ segment from Pigford Blues — this time, what probably will end up being the film’s intro. Please feel free to email this video to someone who might be interested or embed it on your own website.

It’s one the most troublesome aspects of the Pigford settlement – how could thousands (or tens of thousands) of people knowingly commit fraud to receive a $50,000 check that they weren’t entitled to?

We have the answer in the form of undercover audio that was recorded at a meeting that taught potential Pigford claimants exactly how to commit fraud. The meeting was conducted by a man named Thomas Burrell, the head of the Black Farmers Agricultural Association, Inc. At CPAC in February, we held a press conference where we released a two hour unedited section of audio. Now I’m releasing the first in a series of shorter excerpts that take you through some of the key points. I

There are two parts to the full answer of how such massive fraud could come to be ; one practical, the other ethical. Practically speaking, they were coached. They were told precisely what to say in order for their claim to pass muster with the adjudicator. Who told them? People like who conducted meetings for years throughout the country.

The ethical question is the more troubling part. I believe that thousands of basically honest people were induced into committing fraud by people like Mr. Burrell. How? As you will hear in this excerpt from undercover audio that we recorded earlier this year, Thomas Burrell uses a powerful combination of persuasive techniques including literally invoking the name of God, telling his audience that their ancestors were owed the money and the technique of “social proof”, which makes collecting a $50,000 check seem like something many people have done. Stir this together with the basic human failing of greed and frankly it’s a wonder that many more people do not file fraudulent claim.

Here is the first excerpt:

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I’ve often said that the Pigford scandal isn’t a partisan issue. This is about fraud and corruption and while there are many Democrats involved, one of the biggest promoters of Pigford has been Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. Grassley was the Senate sponsor of the Pigford Claims Recovery Act that extended Pigford to another 70,000+ claimants.

Even more troubling than Senator Grassley’s support of the Pigford Legislation, however, has been his explicit support of “Dr.” John Boyd.

Boyd is head of the National Black Farmers Assocuation, a group that he runs out of his house in Virginia. Boyd claims to represent ‘the farmers’ but in fact, he’s personally profited from the Pigford settlement to the tune of over $1,000,000. Boyd aggressively plays the race card against his critics, including Andrew Breitbart and this site.

In 2009, attorney Rose Sanders – a major advocate of Pigford, mind you –  said this about “Dr.” John Boyd…

Less than two years ago, I attended meetings by John Boyd where he and his attorneys were soliciting contracts from hundreds of eligible and ineligible claimants before the Pigford II legislation was passed in Congress. These contracts obligated citizens to pay 1/3 of their recovery to John Boyd’s attorneys plus expenses. Expenses had to be paid even if the claimant was unsuccessful. I objected to these outrageous contracts.

For more on Boyd, you can watch this clip from Pigford Blues about Boyd’s Institute and Doctorate and you can also read this post that shows how Boyd manipulates the press.

I contacted the office of Republican Senator Chuck Grassley today about his support for John Boyd. Here’s the response I got from Grassley’s press secretary, Beth Levine.

Senator Grassley’s support for Pigford II isn’t about John Boyd, it’s about the thousands of black farmers who were unable to have their cases heard before a neutral arbiter. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the courts and the Congress have all said that these farmers deserve to have their cases heard based on the merits. Pigford II simply enables the farmers, or those who attempted to farm, to plead their case in front of a neutral party and be judged on the merits. The law was also specifically written with extra protections to help ensure that fraud is kept out of the program. Those changes have been made to the settlement agreement that will enhance the Department’s ability to fight fraud including requiring adjudicators to be a truly neutral party; allowing that neutral adjudicator to ask the claimant for additional documentation if he or she suspects any fraud; requiring the claimants’ attorneys to certify that there is evidentiary support for the claims; and requiring the Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office to evaluate the Department’s internal controls and audit the process in adjudicating the claims. (emphasis mine.)

This is all standard runaround that Pigford II somehow has higher standards – and it’s not true.

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We’re been posting clips for months but this is the first ‘rough cut’ look at a real sequence from the documentary tentatively titled “Pigford Blues”. I’ll say it again; it’s a rough cut.

But this glimpse does answer some questions about Dr. John Boyd.

In 2009, attorney Rose Sanders – who represented Shirley Sherrod – said this about “Dr.” John Boyd,…

Less than two years ago, I attended meetings by John Boyd where he and his attorneys were soliciting contracts from hundreds of eligible and ineligible claimants before the Pigford II legislation was passed in Congress. These contracts obligated citizens to pay 1/3 of their recovery to John Boyd’s attorneys plus expenses. Expenses had to be paid even if the claimant was unsuccessful. I objected to these outrageous contracts. Boyd’s claim that his April 28th protest is inspired by his concern for Black Farmers must be questioned.

That’s a serious charge Ms. Sanders is making and shows a clear example of black people being taken advantage of by Boyd and the lawyers he was working with.

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Obviously, the team here at the The Bigs has spent a lot of time covering the Pigford scandal and we plan to give you a lot more coverage in the coming weeks. But I’ve noticed something that’s come up a number of times in comments and I’d like to take the chance to address it; the idea that the Pigford case is an unwinnable fight that’s over and done with.

This just isn’t true. Pigford is a battle we can win and the consequences are potentially huge.

First, let’s address the issue of money. Between the first and second Pigford settlement about $2.5 billion dollars has been allocated. About half of that money has been sent out as payments for Pigford I and it’s highly unlikely that any of that money is recoverable.  That’s the bad news.

On the other hand, the billion and a half dollars that has been misallocated by President Obama for the Pigford II settlement has not been sent out yet. In fact no checks are expected to be written until 2012 at the earliest. That means that there’s still time to get an investigation going that will stop those checks – most of which we believe our investigation will show are scheduled to go to people who never farmed a day in their life —  from ever being cut.

One thing that the advocates of Pigford absolutely do not want is an investigation. In fact as Georgia Democratic Congressman Sanford Bishop told a group of farmers, “If they investigate Pigford, they’ll shut this thing down.” You can also see this same attitude coming from the panicked responses of the “professional Pigford class”; those people like Thomas Burrell and Dr. John Boyd who run organizations that profit from the continuation of Pigford fraud.

Just as important, I still believe that there’s a chance to get justice for the actual farmers who face discrimination. However I think that this will only happen by first shutting down Pigford fraud and getting an investigation going.

So, how do we help get investigation started in Congress?

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It’s back to business on our investigation of the Pigford story – the ongoing fraud that needs your help and attention to make it stop. The mainstream – with a few exceptions like John Stossel – are ignoring the story of the one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history because it doesn’t fit their narrative. The good guys are the real farmers who faced discrimination at the hands of the UsDA and the people, mostly conservative at this point, trying to bring their story to light. The bad guys are the trial lawyers, politicians, race hustlers and those inside the USDA who profit by lying to the public about how the Pigford settlement is a ‘victory’ for black farmers.

In this video, we introduce you to Lucious Abrams, a Georgia farmer who was one of the seven original claimants. Abrams has spent years working for justice only to be betrayed by people like the Congressional Black Caucus.  Now Lucious is speaking out and speaking truth to the power structure that doesn’t speak for him.

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In a Friday afternoon news-dump, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and a representative of the Obama Justice Department announced a bombshell: the Obama administration has set up their own “streamlined process” for women and Hispanic farmers to collect damages from the federal government for alleged past discrimination.

Like the fraud-filled Pigford claim persons who claim to have “attempted-to” farm will be eligible for awards of up to fifty thousand dollars each. In response to a question from Big Government’s Lee Stranahan the Department of Justice laid out a set of requirements that is eerily similar to the Pigford claims process, such as categories of “farmed” or “attempted-to-farm,” “owned land” or “attempted-to-own land,” standards that will almost certainly result in thousands of fraudulent claims.

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In testimony before a congressional committee in 2008, John Boyd introduced himself and said “I am Dr. John Boyd. I am President and founder of the National Black Farmers Association, which has more than 94,000 members in 46 states.”

In addition to my strong back in agriculture, I also founded the John Boyd Agricultural and Technology Institute to help educate farmers of all educational levels in order to fight illiteracy. To teach familiarity with and use of the internet, and much more. The program has assisted several thousand farmers and has been expanded to Denmark Technical College.

Boyd’s National Black Farmers Association website has a page about the John Boyd Argicultural and Technology Institute as well — complete with a photo showing a road sign.

In a ‘10 Questions’ article in 2009, John Boyd began one of his answers by prefacing, “Being a visiting professor and forming the John Boyd Agriculture and Technology Institute”.

As I was driving through Virginia yesterday, I decided to take a drive by the Boyd Institute and hoped to walk the hallowed halls that have taught thousands of farmers. Boyd has talked about the Boyd Institute so much that I was keen to visit this august institute.

But there’s no there there. Literally.

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John Boyd is the president of the National Black Farmers Association and has been the main media face of the Pigford settlement for over a decade. He’s been featured on numerous TV shows and in print. He’s been lauded by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and often appears beside them in public appearences. He’s been recognized by President Obama and was present at the private signing ceremony when the Pigford II settlement was signed.

Here’s a question that should be simple to answer — does he actually have a doctorate that allows him to refer to himself in professional situations as Dr. John Boyd?

Hours of research show many contradictions in the way Boyd refers to himself but so far, I’ve found no evidence whatsoever that Boyd ever received any degree, either earned or honorary, much less any doctorate.

In testimony before the House of Representatives in 2008, he refers to himself as Dr. John Boyd .

But Boyd’s bio from Gale Contemporary Black Biography says the hollowing.

Education: Attended Southside Community College, 1983, and Clemson Univ., 1984-85.

Boyd’s Wikipedia entry makes no mention at all of any kind of doctorate nor does his biography on The Huffington Post.

Boyd’s own personal page refers to him as Dr. but there’s no mention of a doctorate of any kind on his biography page on the same site, despite a long list of his accomplishments. One of those listed accomplishments is that he was”vetted by President Obama’s transition team as a candidate for Secretary of Agriculture“.

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While more and more in the government and media slowly catch on to the fascinating story of Pigford fraud and corruption we’ve thoroughly documented here at BigGovernment, there’s one important group taking the charges we’ve made in this space very seriously: the National Black Farmers Association.  The event is to take place February 15, 2011; we received the release today:

I have 200 acres in Arkansas and have raised hogs.

Pigford is the biggest rip-off this country has ever known, and there are lots of people in positions of power that know it.  Politicians are using it to buy votes.  Trial lawyers are using it to get rich.

I personally know of people who have no connection to farming at all who got Pigford checks.  People with potted plants in their apartments claimed to be farmers and got paid.  I saw an instance where eight Pigford checks went to one house.   There are drug addicts and pushers who have received payments who have never farmed a day in their life.

There was discrimination at the US Department of Agriculture. It needed to be dealt with. I was suing the USDA before Timothy Pigford even filed suit.  I wrote to attorney Al Pires, who eventually filed a class action lawsuit against the USDA,  but he saw that there wasn’t going to be a huge amount of money for him.  So he passed. What he did find was a way to work a scam from inside the Star City, Arkansas USDA office by paying a USDA employee to process claimants.   This employee would take from $5,000 to $25,000 for each successful Pigford claim.  Pires was in this totally for the money.  He’s made far more money than any black farmer. (more…)

Congressman Steve King (R-IA), a Member of the House Agriculture and House Judiciary Committees, has written Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to request a meeting next week to discuss allegations of serious fraud in the disbursement of Pigford v. Vilsack settlement money. Pigford v. Vilsack is the class action lawsuit initiated by black farmers who claimed to have been discriminated against by the United States Department of Agriculture. King’s request was mailed to Secretary Vilsack this afternoon.

“There is a growing firestorm over the allegations of massive fraud in the Pigford settlements,” said King. “According to sworn testimony by John Boyd, President of the National Black Farmers Association, there are 18,000 black farmers. They could not all have been victims of discrimination. To date, there have been over 94,000 claims made. These numbers speak to massive fraud, meaning that American taxpayers are on the hook for what Pigford judge Paul Friedman called ‘forty acres and a mule.’”

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From Black Voices News:

Approximately 80,000 black farmers missed the deadline for the 1999 settlement. In February 2010, the Obama Administration announced a $1.15 billion agreement to resolve the second round of claims, with the purpose of bringing “these long-ignored claims of African-American farmers to a rightful conclusion.”

The funding has passed the House but has been stalled in the Senate, where it has been attached to several bills only to be scratched out.

Senators Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, also stood with Boyd, during the news conference to announce they are introducing a standalone bill with Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) to fund the $1.15 billion settlement. “We’re working together to send this language to the President as quickly as possible because our Black farmers have waited too long,” said Sen. Hagan. “We want to ensure Black farmers in our country finally receive the justice they deserve,” she said.

“More than 4,000 African American farmers in North Carolina and over 75,000 nationwide have been discriminated against and denied just compensation for decades. Today, I join with my colleagues from Louisiana and Arkansas, Senators Landrieu and Lincoln, to introduce a bill to fund the settlement once and for all, and we are working to send this language to the President.”

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