When severe drought in 2021 made ranchers in Crook County, Wyoming, desperate to secure hay for their cattle before winter, a Kansas man spotted an opportunity and designed a scheme that preyed on stockgrowers worried they wouldn’t have enough cattle feed.
The scam involved hay bought in Nebraska, shipped by a company from Kansas and caused ranchers in Wyoming and Montana to lose more than $100,000.
The man behind it all was Jory Parks, who was sentenced to five years ofprobation Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Billings, Montana. Judge Susan Watters spared Parks a prison sentence of up to 20 years so he could pay restitution to his victims.
Instead, Parks was given 20 years to make his victims whole through $500 monthly payments against his $103,721 debt.
“He took advantage of their need for hay, told lies and stole their money over and over again,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin D. Hargrove in a pre-sentencing memo. In a presentence investigation report, the prosecution cited a guideline sentence of eight to 14 months of imprisonment.
“The victims’ desperation in this case was central to the success of Parks’ fraud scheme,” Hargrove wrote. “Experiencing a significant drought in the summer of 2021, ranchers in Montana and across the region suffered significant hardships.
“He knew livestock was going to die and peoples’ livelihoods hung in the balance. It was against this backdrop that Parks contracted with ranchers ... to sell them hay, demanded down payments to secure their shipments, and then never delivered or only delivered a fraction of what they purchased.”
Family Ranch
That’s what happened to Katalina Pfeil, who raises cattle on her family ranch in Sundance, Wyoming.
By the end of the summer in 2021, Pfeil knew the dryland ranch would not put up enough hay to get their cattle through the winter. So,she started searching on Facebook for anyone selling hay at an affordable price.
“By this point, any hay that was in the region was incredibly expensive. I mean, we're talking towards $300 a ton just to feed your animals when the year before it had been $90 a ton,” Pfeil told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday after Parks was sentenced. “We were desperate, just like everybody else in our region, and I had discovered that down in Nebraska was a bunch of very reasonable hay, and it was worth the effort to get it trucked in.”
Parks responded to Pfeil’s posts on Facebook in October 2021, just a couple months after Parks set up Heart Cross Ranch Trucking, according to documents filed with the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office. Three businesses with the Heart Cross Ranch name are now listed as “forfeited.”
But in October 2021, Heart Cross Ranch Trucking was just getting revved up.
Too Good To Be True
“He offered me the lowest rate by far, and he had claimed he had several employees and trucks and that they were going to get it to me right away, that I should expect it within the week,” remembered Pfeil, who said Parks only delivered half what she ordered. “Three loads delivered, three loads disappeared.”
Any early misgivings were smoothed over by Parks who talked a good game.
“I met him, and every victim that you will ever talk to will tell you about his silver tongue,” said Pfeil, accusing Parks of trying to manipulate his way out of their deal. “He knew I was pregnant, and he used it against me. He was claiming that his daughter was sick and in the hospital.”
Pfeil and others victimized by Parks started to communicate online, and Parks responded by filing for a restraining order against Pfeil in Crook County Court.
“One day, I pull up to the ranch entrance and there’s two sheriffs sitting at the entrance and I knew they were looking for me,” remembered Pfeil. “He’s trying to get a restraining order against me? Let me remind you, I'm the young pregnant woman that he stole from, and he was trying to claim that he was the victim.”
A judge denied the restraining order, said Pfeil, who teamed up with another Sundance rancher who also was scammed.
Bryce Conzelman lost $16,000 on a deal with Parks, he said, adding that when you’re a rancher and vulnerable to drought and other market pressures, scams are a real threat.
“Boy, that stuff can happen in a hurry,” said Conzelman, adding that to feed his cows in 2021, “We just had to buck down and buy more hay.”
When Pfeil and Conzelman complained to the Crook County prosecutor, “We were shrugged off and told it was a civil matter,” said Pfeil. “But we had started a Facebook group and began finding all of the victims of the same man, three of which, they were all in Montana. So ultimately that's why the Montana FBI picked up this case.”
Scamming Continued
Parks also continued to make the most of Facebook, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Montana.
“A ranching business owned by a couple in Ingomar responded to one of Parks’ Facebook ads in which he claimed to be selling hay cheaper than they had been able to find,” the release says. “The couple signed a contract with Parks to buy 190 tons of hay from Parks for $43,300 and mailed half of the amount, $21,650, as a down payment to Heart Cross Ranch.
“Parks deposited the check into his business account in a bank in Colorado. Three weeks later, Parks delivered the couple’s first shipment of 23 tons of the 190 tons they had purchased, but never delivered the additional hay or repaid the remainder of the down payment.”
Investigators also discovered Parks told one victim that he had sold all his hay the previous year to a respected horse racing facility in Nebraska. After interviewing the CEO of the facility and analyzing Parks’ financials, the FBI determined that claim was false.
The Sentencing
Cowboy State Daily reached out to Parks, who did not return a voicemail.
Shandor Badaruddin, a Missoula attorney who represented Parks, said that he believes justice was served in this case and a prison sentence spelled out in federal guidelines wasn’t necessary.
“They're guidelines, and they establish benchmarks. I think it was eight to 14 months, but that's not necessarily eight to 14 months in prison. That can be eight to 14 months in prison,” he said. “It could be eight to 14 months on probation. It could be 8 to 14 months on home detention.”
Badaruddin said that in his experience, federal judges strive for “the appropriate sentence, meaning sufficient but not greater than necessary.”
Badaruddin said Parks is “pursuing employment” in Logan, Kansas, trying to find “whatever job pays the most so he can repay the restitution order by the judge. He wants to get that paid as soon as possible and guess what? They want it paid as soon as possible too.
“He wants to live in Logan, Kansas. Well, there ain't a whole lot going on there outside the agricultural industry, so I don't know. I don't know what he's going to do.”
Words to Live By
Back in Sundance, Pfeil continues to raise cattle on the 2,000-acre ranch her family first homesteaded in 1880.
Her son, Banks Crane, is the seventh generation to come along, but Pfeil acknowledges ranching as a financially viable way of life is far from guaranteed.
Parks owes her $38,966.70, she said, and as the payments come in, “I've still got a small share of cows on the family ranch. And I'm just going to keep fighting this fight and letting everyone know what this man did to me and hopefully helping others prevent the same thing from happening to them.”
When Pfeil saw Parks in court Wednesday, “He was very downcast. I mean, the best way I could describe it is he looked like a kicked dog.”
With a sigh, Pfeil said this whole mess with Parks could have been avoided, if she’d followed her newly adopted motto: “Cash on delivery.”
