A Two Thousand Dollar Nebraska Land Purchase Leads to a Federal Fraud Case
Outside, the silence of the Nebraska prairie was absolute, broken only by the occasional creak of the barn roof as the temperature dropped toward freezing. My soil was still untilled, my tractor still idle in the dark shed, but for the first time in weeks, the knot in my stomach felt a little looser.
I sat in the dark, my palms dry and flat on the table, waiting for the screen to light up with the first image from the gate.
The tiny green light of the security camera blinking once in the dark, steady as a heartbeat.
The fluorescent tubes in Sarah Finch’s basement conference room hummed with a low, steady vibration that felt like a bad alternator.
On the long oak table, Sarah had laid out the yellowed nineteen sixty-seven deed to my two hundred acres, its edges frayed and soft as old flannel.
Directly across from me sat Brinley Fairmont, her fingers tapping against a thick leather folder, while her attorney, a tall man named Robert, adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses.
Chadwick Fairmont sat two inches behind his wife, his phone held flat against his chest with the camera lens pointed directly at my collar.
