He put others at ease, shedding his skin according to audience. Raised in Jack County, Lyon tore up the backroads around the community of Perrin, roughly 100 miles northwest of Dallas, and looked the part of Texas cattleman: 6’1” in Ropers and Wranglers, easy laugh, relaxed demeanor, a shade leathered, junior college football stint, and a family man to boot. However, an understanding of the enormity of his con requires a trip in time to 2000, back to a hustle that revealed Lyon’s massive propensity to deceive: Some men are born to grift. cattle market, hauling in millions of dollars with a wink. With so much gravy for the taking, MCM acquiesced to Lyon’s request, and set the fuse on its own collapse.Īnd in the shining interim between the checkbook acquisition and MCM’s bankruptcy, Lyon was reborn as a golden boy of the U.S. Roughly three years later, emboldened and boosted by a seemingly remarkable ability to consistently turn a profit, Lyon approached the defining moment of an illicit career: He asked MCM for a checkbook and a signature stamp, the twin tools of larceny. In 2011, 46-year-old Lyon was a player in the North Texas cattle industry, moving livestock at a steady pace as a representative of Nebraska-based Midwestern Cattle Marketing (MCM). It was a hellfire ride to criminal infamy and doomed to failure out of the chute, but for several buck-wild months in 2015, the sticky-fingered Lyon turned the Texas cattle industry into his own playground. In a high-risk, anxiety-inducing shell game with almost $100 million on the table, Tony Lyon pulled the strings on an outrageously intoxicating check-kiting scam, and piled lies atop a teetering Jenga tower for the ages.Īs businesses and banks ignored alarm bells, including bold warnings from the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA), Lyon used a legitimate knowledge of agriculture and ranching, along with a good old boy personae and the familiarity of native status, to launch a scheme seeded with fake buyers, ghost cattle, false invoices, and empty handshakes. In the span of a few months in 2015, a Lone Star con-man pulled off a stunning livestock swindle, generating more dollar flow than some of the largest beef-producing companies in the United States.
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