United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 23-2177 ___________________________ United States of America Plaintiff - Appellee v. Garland Joseph Nelson Defendant - Appellant ___________________________ No. 23-2207 ___________________________ United States of America Plaintiff - Appellee v. Garland Joseph Nelson Defendant - Appellant ____________ Appeals from United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri ____________ Submitted: January 12, 2024 Filed: July 1, 2024 ____________ Before LOKEN, KELLY, and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________ KELLY, Circuit Judge. Garland Joseph Nelson pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and one count of felon in possession of a firearm. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 922(g)(1), 924(a)(2). The district court 1 sentenced him to 360 months of imprisonment and 36 months of supervised release, and ordered him to pay $260,925.07 in restitution. Nelson appeals the restitution order. We affirm. I. Between November 2018 and July 2019, Nelson operated a cattle fraud scheme in Missouri. Under the auspices of his mother’s company, J4s Farm Enterprises, Inc., Nelson received cattle that belonged to Diemel’s Livestock, LLC (Diemel’s Livestock), a company that was owned and operated by brothers, Justin and Nicholas Diemel. Nelson agreed to feed and pasture the cattle in Missouri, and sell them after they had grown and become more valuable. But he failed to feed or care for the cattle properly, and many of the cattle died. Rather than disclose the loss to Diemel’s Livestock, Nelson continued to accept more cattle—selling them as if they were the original cattle and continuing with the fraud. All told, of approximately 534 heads of cattle that Nelson received from Diemel’s Livestock, 217—or 40%— died before they could be sold. To lull Justin and Nicholas Diemel into believing that he would provide payment and to fend off their inquiries or complaints, on June 24, 2019, Nelson sent Diemel’s Livestock a check for $215,936.50. However, the check came from an account that had a balance of only twenty-one cents, and Nelson damaged the check before sending, in an attempt to make it unusable. After receiving the check, the 1 The Honorable Beth Phillips, Chief Judge, United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri. -2- Diemel brothers traveled to Missouri on July 20, 2019. Nelson took them to several farms that day, and indicated that the cattle on those farms were theirs, but they could tell that was not true. The following morning, when Justin and Nicholas Diemel went to Nelson’s mother’s farm to receive the payment he still owed, Nelson killed them. During the same time period as his fraud against the Diemel brothers, Nelson engaged in similar conduct involving farmer David Foster in Kansas, and farm owner John Gingerich in Missouri. Under that scheme, Nelson and Foster partnered in a joint venture to buy, raise, and sell newborn calves. While Foster provided Nelson with funding to buy the calves—including from Diemel’s Livestock— Nelson was supposed to cover the costs of raising them, with the supposed aim of splitting the proceeds after the …
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