Meat Packing Plant Execs Plead Guilty to Selling $1 Million in Adulterated Ground Beef to Prisons

Two meat packing plant executives today pleaded guilty to their role in a scheme to sell more than $1 million of adulterated meat — including whole cow hearts labeled as “ground beef” — to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox.

West Texas Provisions, Inc. president Jeffery Neal Smith, 49, and operations manager Derrick Martinez, 43, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States before Magistrate Judge Lee Ann Reno Tuesday afternoon.

According to plea papers, the defendants admitted to selling more than 775,000 pounds of uninspected, misbranded, or adulterated meat to...

Two Defendants Charged in Scheme to Sell Fraudulently Misbranded Beef Products

An indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Howard Mora and Alan Buxbaum with conspiring to commit wire fraud in connection with a scheme to use counterfeit United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) stamps to misbrand USDA “Choice” beef products as higher quality USDA “Prime” and sell those products at inflated prices. The defendants were arrested this morning and are scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon before United States Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy.

Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Bethanne M. Dinkins, Special Agent-in-Charge, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General (USDA-OIG), announced...