A Texas man was indicted for his role in the theft of more than 3,000 cattle in Iredell County and surrounding areas.
Clint Clifford Sicking, 40, of Texas, is charged with conspiring to defraud the United States and to violate the laws of the United States, U.S. District Attorney Dena King said in a news release on Wednesday.
Sicking is also facing a bank fraud charge, one count of theft of livestock, two counts of interstate transportation of stolen livestock and two counts of sale and receipt of stolen livestock, King said.
A codefendant in the case, William Dalton Edwards, 25, of Mount Airy, pleaded guilty on Aug. 2 to conspiring to defraud the United States, King said previously. Edwards has not been sentenced as of Wednesday.
According to the indictment, from April 2018 to October 2022, Sicking conspired with Edwards to defraud livestock markets, also known as sales barns. The sales barns were in Iredell and Cleveland counties as well as Texas, Oklahoma and Virginia.
The indictment said Sicking and Edwards bought cattle from sales barns in North Carolina and wrote checks to pay for the cattle. The checks were worthless.
Sicking and Edwards arranged to take the cattle out of state before the defrauded sales barns and financial institutions could determine the checks were worthless, according to the indictment. The stolen cattle were then resold in Texas and Oklahoma.
Sicking and Edwards obtained more than 900 cows and caused over $780,000 in losses from the North Carolina sales barns. In total, the pair stole more than 3,000 cattle and caused more than $1 million in financial losses to sales barns throughout multiple states
Sicking could face around 60 years in prison if found guilty on all charges.