OMAHA, Neb.  — A Colorado man has been given five years of probation for a tractor sale scheme in Nebraska.

Federal prosecutors say 63-year-old Benedict Palen Jr., of Denver, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Omaha. He was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service and pay the remaining unpaid restitution of $2,500.

Prosecutors say Palen, acting through his company, Great Plains Farms, sold a tractor in September 2012 to a party in Holdrege, Nebraska, and to someone in North Dakota.

According to documents filed in the case Further investigation revealed that not only was there a lien against the tractor held by a bank in Kansas, but the same tractor had actually been sold in 2011 by the defendant, as vice-president of Pull Pans, Inc., to a company in Florida.

 

 

Prosecutors say Palen also sold a different tractor to someone in Bertrand, Nebraska, that also had been sold to the Florida company.