Palin appointee charged with fraud, cover-up of dairy's public cash cow

Fifty-seven-year-old Karen B. Olson fought for years to save the dairy business in the Matanuska Valley. Now she's going to have to fight to save herself. A federal grand jury on Friday handed down a six-count amendment charging Olson with lying to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and trying to defraud the state of Alaska. According to charging documents, Olson covered up the alleged criminal conduct of Kyle E. Beus, the former co-owner and president of the Valley Dairy.

The dairy did business as the Matanuska Creamery. It was trying to pick up the pieces after Matanuska Maid, an historic Valley dairy folded. Mat Maid was started in the 1930s by the Matanuska Valley Farmers Cooperative Association, an offshoot of the Matanuska Colony and New Deal efforts to boost American Midwesterners out of the Great Depression by sending them to Alaska to tame the wilderness.

By the mid-1980s, Mat Maid was faltering, and a state-run corporation took over management. It struggled until Sarah Palin became Alaska's governor. She arrived on the scene shortly before the state Board of Agriculture and Conservation, which had watched the dairy bleed cash for years, voted to deny it further loans.

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130823/former-palin-appointee-charged-fraud-cover-dairys-public-cash-cow



GRIFTERS....UNITE!!