$3M Marana cattle fraud shatters friendship, puts 2 families on financial brink

[TexasTowelie]

Behind the scenes at one of the busiest stockyards in Arizona, $3 million worth of cattle was stolen from a prominent Marana family by a man they once considered a friend, federal prosecutors said in court documents.

Last August, longtime cattleman and well-known rodeo cowboy Clay Parsons discovered $1.3 million missing from the accounts of the Marana Stockyards and Livestock Market, which his family has run since the early 1990s. The stockyard’s line of credit also was drawn down inexplicably by nearly $2 million, according to records from U.S. District Court in Tucson.

A trail of fraudulent documents led to Seth Nichols, the stockyard’s 29-year-old office manager and son of Donald Hugh Nichols, a cattle broker who had been friends with Parsons for decades, court records show.

Seth Nichols pleaded guilty to federal bank fraud in February and faces up to five years in prison. His father was indicted Aug. 22 as a co-conspirator in $1.6 million of fraudulent cattle sales at the stockyard’s auctions.

Read more: https://tucson.com/news/local/m-marana-cattle-fraud-shatters-friendship-puts-families-on-financial/article_dc13f0e5-6e95-545a-8b61-2fb55569064d.html

[Kali]

1. They burned my local auction by changing their sale day.

Parsons was on Fridays from way back before they owned it and moved it out to Marana. A few years ago they moved it to Thursdays so buyers had to send people to both places or try to make the 2 hour drive out to Willcox in the same day.

I know Clay and he is a nice guy but we quit shipping cattle there a long time ago. Don't know the Nichols hope they go to jail.