A Two Thousand Dollar Nebraska Land Purchase Leads to a Federal Fraud Case
Inside was a document titled Notice of Violation and Assessment. The paper demanded fifteen thousand dollars for immediate payment, citing three counts of unauthorized agricultural storage and failure to maintain residential turf. They were charging me for parking my own tractor on my own dirt.
The details made no sense for raw prairie. It listed violations for unapproved fence materials and storage of non-conforming machinery.
I turned the page over to see who had authorized such a claim against agricultural ground. At the bottom of the sheet, on the line marked County Registrar Authorization, there was a signature written in dark blue ink.
The name was scribbled in a long, looping hand, but there was no printed name beneath it to show which deputy clerk had signed off on the demand. I held the page up to the kitchen window, trying to read the letters through the light.
The signature looked like it had been written in a hurry, the ink slightly smeared at the tail of the last letter. It was the only blue ink on a page of photocopied black text.
