Photo Credit: Smithsonian Magazine
With his $3.7 million civil court judgement against a notorious cattle scammer now executable in Tennessee, Ron Ratliff wants to make it clear the series of cattle sales he made to notorious cattle scammer Bert Smith IV are separate from Ron Ratliff Cattle Buying Station still operating in Garnett.
“They’re a completely separate deal,” Ratliff told the Informer recently. “One’s got nothing to do with the other whatsoever.”
‘The other’ in this case is a series of bounced checks Ratliff says Smith wrote him for cattle purchases that ended up more than $3 million deficient. It’s a game industry analysts nationwide say Smith has been playing – and cheating – for decades; and no one, not law enforcement, the USDA nor the cattle industry itself seems to be able to stop him.
Packers and Stockyards USDA complaint
Ratliff said the civil judgement had been successfully “registered” or “domesticated” from Anderson County where it was rendered to Tennessee, and is now in the process of being executed against Smith, who lives in Lewisburg. The “registering” of a judgment rendered in one state to give it “teeth” in another state requires the receiving state court to authorize it and for the details to be recorded in the new state’s property records, and allows it to be pursued there as it would be in the home state – with collection via garnishments, asset seizure, etc. Ratliff said an out-of-area financial institution failed to notify him promptly Smith’s checks were being returned insufficient funds. By the time he found out, it was too late.
The $3.7 million court judgment is in addition to 10 felony counts of theft, 6 counts of passing a worthless check and a single count of abuse of an elderly person Smith faces in Anderson County in connection with the October 2022 deal gone bad. The criminal case – totaling $1.8 million in bad checks – falls short of the actual exposure he had to Smith’s crookery, Ratliff says, upon which the civil judgement was based. Smith was arrested on an Anderson County warrant by Livestock Brand Commission agents of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry in September of last year.
Ratliff refused to provide the Informer with photos and contact information he said he had gathered on Smith through a private investigator.
Hanson Morgan Livestock v. B4 Cattle Company
Internet searches and Kansas court records are peppered with numerous similar cases involving Smith dating back decades – all the way back to 2002 according to Tim Niedecken of the American Livestock Markets and Dealers Association. In a Texas case in 2012, Smith’s mother paid restitution to the Sulphur Springs Livestock Auction for 59 head of cattle valued at some $66,000 which Smith failed to pay for after they were refused by the destination feed yard in Nebraska. Smith operated along with his father in some instances, under the names B4 Cattle Company and Rowdy Livestock LLC.
Niedecken said the word-of-mouth network among cattle purchasers and buyers is about the only defense against unscrupulous dealers.
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“There’s no clearinghouse to, say, give me a list of all the bad actors,” Niedecken said. He said the USDA requires buyers to maintain a bond and to pay for purchased cattle promptly, but there’s really no teeth in that requirement. And while statistically over 99.9 percent of all cattle deals in the U.S. – billions of dollars in cattle sales per year – go off without a hitch, the damage can be devestating to individual buyers who get stung by repeat offenders like Bert Smith.
“He’s caused a lot of damage for a lot of people,” Niedecken said. He said the best defense is simple credit checks and research on buyers a dealer doesn’t know – and release of cattle only after the money is in the bank.
“Today there are electronic fund transfers – lots of ways to move money around. Just basically know who you’re dealing with.” He said an unfortunate few have paid the price for all the traditional trust in the cattle industry.
“Billions of dollars a year in cattle are moved on a handshake,” Niedecken said.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
