A northwest Iowa man faces up to 20 years in federal prison after pleading guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa to defrauding livestock producers in several Midwestern states. Fifty-year-old Robert Harry Bickerstaff of Rock Rapids pled guilty on Friday, Dec. 1, to one count of wire fraud. Bickerstaff, a former regional manager at an Iowa livestock dealer from 2018 to 2021, admitted to overseeing livestock buying stations across Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. He confessed to a fraudulent scheme that involved manipulating swine weights and classifications, falsifying scale tickets, and destroying potential evidence in early 2021. Bickerstaff was a pork producer himself and previously received recognition from a statewide pork producers’ association for his work promoting pork in Lyon County. A sentencing hearing is yet to be scheduled, pending the completion of a pre-sentencing report. Bickerstaff faces a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release following any imprisonment. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated the case.
