A Two Thousand Dollar Nebraska Land Purchase Leads to a Federal Fraud Case
I stood frozen by the front tire of the tractor. Brinley Fairmont’s voice came back to me from the day she stood on my porch, a quiet threat she had made before she went down my steps. If you do not pay, we will make sure you cannot even turn a spade of dirt on this property.
The white cruiser backed out of my drive, leaving two dark tracks in the frost. I reached down and touched the old fence stretcher with the chipped red handle leaning against the wooden frame of the barn. It was cold as ice.
By ten o’clock, I was sitting in the low-backed vinyl chair in Sarah Finch’s basement office. The radiator in the corner gave off a dry, metallic hiss that smelled of old paint. Sarah had the manila envelope spread open across her desk, her index finger tracing the names on the caption.
She took off her wire-rimmed glasses and used the hem of her blue flannel shirt to clean the lenses.
“They filed this under an expedited environmental protection statute,” Sarah said, her voice flat and even. “It bypasses the standard ninety-day notice because they claimed there was an immediate threat to the local watershed.”
