re: Funny business in the Delta: Farmer, bankers accused of racketeering

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Didn't read the article, but can you explain the benefit of using the worker's names on things? Thanks.

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So, on these entities, a person that has "ownership" in that entity has to either spend X amount of hours per year working on that farm, whether it be physical labor or office labor, or they have to be a spouse to one of these people... Usually these days it's people in true management roles and everything is fine... But sometimes, they'll bring a new name into the entity and give these people fake titles like equipment manager or grain shipping manager, shite like that. If they are on farm labor, then it's easy to explain it when questions start getting asked because that person really is working on equipment and shipping grain.

If you get off farm people to take ownership in these entities, you still have to give them those assignments, but really they don't do shite. So it's kind of risky because these off farm people usually don't know shite about farming and aren't there every day, so they're out of the loop on what's going on day to day. You start having to send them weekly email updates and stuff to keep them in the loop and cover your tracks in case the Feds come knocking.

So the benefit is a convenience thing. The risk of keeping it in house is people start wanting their cut for working their asses off all spring, summer, and fall.

eta: All in all, it's a lot safer to keep it in the immediate family and if you have a manager that you trust and are completely transparent with, then that's a good fit for additional ownership in the entities. You gotta make damn sure you're on the same page though.