Former Exchange Bookkeeper Charged With Fraud

Adding another wrinkle to the situation now being faced by the Lockwood Farmers Exchange, the cooperative’s former bookkeeper has just been charged with eight counts of fraud in Dade County Circuit Court.

Amanda Renea Williams, the former Amanda Dodd, was charged with numerous counts of fraudulent use of a credit/debit device, following her arrest on Oct. 27, 2020.

Williams was employed by the Lockwood Farmers Exchange from October 2005 to June 2019, in various capacities involving the handling of funds, the last of which was bookkeeper/accounts payable/grain management. This is according to her public LinkedIn account profile, accessed the afternoon of Nov. 3.

It was confirmed by multiple sources in October that the Lockwood Farmers Exchange is facing a mid-December deadline to refinance or sell its assets. What happens to the Exchange — a century-old farmer’s co-op whose elevator headhouse is an area landmark — and its ongoing operations if the deadline is missed is unclear. What impact Williams’s alleged financial malfeasance may have had is not clear.

This year has been a rough year for the Exchange, as 2020 has been for most businesses as going concerns. The cooperative was just one of a number of area businesses to be approved for COVID-19 relief Paycheck Protection Loans of between $150,000 and $350,000; it’s funding being approved April 7. The loan application stated the Exchange had payroll expenses of between $720,000 and $ 1.68 million in 2019, with its 20 employees being paid between $36,000 and $84,000 annually, depending on position.

According to the probable cause statement filed with the Dade County Circuit Court, over several years Williams is alleged to have used corporate credit card accounts of the Lockwood Farmers Exchange to fund personal expenses, including purchases to support a T-shirt printing business she had started. Other personal expenses charged to Exchange credit cards included purchases for car insurance, gasoline, cellular phone plans, food, infant care items, various items from Amazon Prime and Walmart, and other items that would be unusual for a grain elevator and farm supply business to purchase and have shipped to her home address. Investigators have so far found over $7,000 in suspicious charges going back to at least November of 2017.

The Dade County Sheriff’s Office has been investigating Williams since at least September of 2019. Cpl. Derrick Henson was the investigating deputy listed on the probable cause statement.

The arrest and criminal charges came after Williams and her spouse, Tommy Williams, reached a settlement agreement with Lockwood Farmers Exchange, Inc., on Oct. 8, 2020, in federal bankruptcy proceedings.

The bankruptcy settlement proceedings with the Exchange first began in March 2020, with the Exchange corporation intervening against the Williamses in their personal bankruptcy case, filed in the Western District of Missouri Bankruptcy Court. The Exchange corporation’s complaint related to the dischargeability of the Williamses’ debts to Lockwood Farmers Exchange, Inc. These debts were reported as being incurred under false pretenses, false representation, and actual fraud under Section 523(a)(2) of the Bankruptcy Code as well as via fraud as fiduciary, embezzlement, and larceny under Section 523(a)(4) of the Bankruptcy Code.

Docket entries in the bankruptcy case indicate the parties reached a settlement as of Thursday, Oct. 8, after which there was a final docket entry in the case on Oct. 14. The Farmers Exchange was represented by Donald M. Brown of Douglas, Haun & Heidemann, PC, in the proceedings. The judge handling the case was Cynthia A. Norton.