Cedar Falls Banker Receives Federal Sentencing For Farm Loan Fraud

A Northeast Iowa man has been sentenced to a year in prison time after falsifying farm loan documents.

Get our free mobile app

Bradley Schlotfeldt, 59 years old from Cedar Falls, was a vice president and lending officer of a bank. On March 10^th, he pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement to a financial institution. On Thursday, he received an over-a-year-long federal prison sentence.

According to the US Attorney’s Office, the information from the plea agreement and sentencing show that Schlotfeldt made false statements to the victim’s bank regarding the Young Farmer loan.

Schlotfeldt filled out a loan application for the victim bank which indicated that a particular person was operating a farm. However, the report says that Schlotfeldt knew that that individual wasn’t and had never operated a farm.

The victim bank then loaned the money to the individual and that person then transferred the money to a different individual. The person was not using the money to farm or pay off a debt to the victim bank. Overall, the bank lost $575,218 from the Young Farmer loan.

After learning that Schlotfeldt submitted false documents for the Young Farmer loan, the victim bank also discovered that he falsified thirteen other Young Farmer loan documents. According to the release, Schlotfeldt falsified the documents in a variety of ways “including making it appear someone had signed a document when they had not, altering numbers to avoid greater scrutiny, and bypassing his direct supervisor who was more likely to recognize false numbers”.

In total, the bank wrote off $6,738,290.35 in loans that were associated with Schlotfeldt.

Schlotfeldt was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, make $3,000,000 in restitution, and after prison time he will serve five years of supervised release.