Kansas City Star Digs Into Fraudulent Organics Purveyor

The Kansas City Star has detailed the story of Randy Constant, a Chillicothe, Missouri, man who fraudulently sold millions of dollars’ worth of “organic” grains—as much as 7% of all the corn and 8% of all the soybeans sold nationally as organic in 2016. Federal investigators began looking into Constant when a competitor tipped off the government that it was impossible for him to have such high outputs legitimately. An FBI investigation revealed that he sold $140 million worth of “organic” grain from 2010-2017 that, if labeled correctly, would have likely been worth half of that total. The Star asserts that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had received a complaint in 2007 about Constant’s soybeans, which tests showed were genetically modified in violation of organic regulations, but the agency failed to take any action.

Attorneys for Constant argued that his fraud was a victimless crime, but the court disagreed, sentencing him to ten years for the “incalculable damage” to consumers and the organic food industry. Constant died before serving his sentence.