Page History: Billie Sol Estes
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Page Revision: Sunday, 30 June 2013 17:44
Billie Sol Estes is a former financier who used numerous welfare ponzi schemes to make millions of dollars before he was caught, tried and convicted (part of his conviction was later overturned on the grounds that excessive media publicity had made an impartial trial impossible).
Speech Relevance
Reagan mentions Sol Estes briefly in '
A Time For Choosing':
At the same time, there has been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There is now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can't tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.
Sol Estes created a scheme involving selling liquid ammonia, getting money from government grain storage loans (which he obtained via bribery of several Dept. of Agriculture officials), leasing non-existent grain storage tanks and illegally obtaining cotton allotments. You could only grow cotton if you had an allotment and allotments could only be transferred if land was purchased via eminent domain.
On top of everything, another official of the Dept. of Agriculture who had been investigating the cotton allotments was found shot 5 times with his own rifle. He (Estes) later claimed to a grand jury that Lyndon Johnson had ordered the death of this official to cover up his role in Estes' schemes.
Source Links
Billie Sol Estes (Wikipedia)Con Artist Hall of Infamy : Billie Sol EstesBillie Sol Estes : Biography