A state judge in Ventura has ruled in a preliminary hearing that the fraud case against Sharon Palmer and James Stewart, of Rawesome Food Club fame, will move to a trial. A jury trial could come as early as May or June. The original charges were softened a bit when the Ventura District Attorney’s lawyer said ten “overt acts” would be eliminated from the original charges.
The case grows out of several hundred thousand dollars of loans made by a number of Rawesome members and other supporters of sustainable farming to Sharon Palmer, to help her launch Healthy Family Farms in Santa Paula, CA, back in 2008. Among the arguments and testimony that came out during the three-day hearing that just ended yesterday, and that members of a jury may well have to ponder, are the following:
* The victims of the alleged fraud didn’t file complaints. Apparently none of the five parties cited in the state’s case that advanced money to Palmer in 2008 were upset enough to demand that the state go after the controversial farmer. One is understood to have sought a lien on the farm to retrieve the loaned funds.
* The lenders made money available to Palmer to set up the farming operation, as opposed to financing acquisition of the land. Palmer never gained ownership of the land–rather, she leased the land from a Los Angeles real estate investor and Rawesome member, Larry Otting, who had used his credit to obtain a bank loan on the land.
* Ironically, Otting, together with Rawesome co-founder Aajonus Vonderplanitz, were the ones who tipped Ventura County authorities off to the alleged fraud, back in 2010. An investigator with the Ventura County District Attorney testified the two approached the authorities with complaints about Palmer. Vonderplanitz was understood to have been upset because he thought Palmer was substituting conventional factory food for food she supposedly raised on her farm. The authorities didn’t consider that a serious enough offense to pursue. And Otting was understood to have complained about what he said were Palmer’s late payments on her lease, and other related transgressions. Those allegations intrigued the authorities enough that they launched the investigation that led to the charges being filed against Palmer and Stewart, as well as against Otting himself.
* Otting cut a deal with prosecutors whereby the eleven counts of grand theft and money laundering against him were reduced to one count of grand theft. He testified during the hearing just ended about his role in the case, and presumably will testify again during the trial. Moreover, he no longer has to post the $80,000 bail he posted a couple weeks back.
* Another of the defendants, Rawesome co-founder James Stewart, barely came up during the proceedings. While he is accused in all 37 counts of fraud-related charges in the case, none of those who testified during the hearing seemed able to associate him with anything beyond putting Palmer in contact with Otting back in 2008. Indeed, the prosecution sought to tie him to something known as “Sustainable Community.” Testimony never revealed what that was. The prosecution argued, though, that the single act of bringing Otting and Palmer together launched the “conspiracy” whereby Otting acted as a “straw purchaser” on behalf of Palmer.
* Though Palmer is also charged in all 37 counts, she didnt seem to quite fit the image of the leader of a massive fraud who dupes people out of their money and disappears. At least two of those who loaned her money said during the hearing that she has kept in regular contact with them about delays in repaying the loans, and her intention to make good on the money. Two of the victims are understood to have even put up money in connection with ongoing efforts to secure bail for her, and indeed, she was released after being held for more than three weeks after being arrested on the Ventura fraud charges.
It’s not easy to make sense out of these proceedings, any more than the original case launched against Palmer and Stewart last August by the Los Angeles County District Attorney…except that the authorities don’t much care for James Stewart and Sharon Palmer.
Wonder if this person confronted the “borrower” before seeking the lien? Appears they wanted their money back.
“substituting conventional factory food for food she supposedly raised on her farm. The authorities didn’t consider that a serious enough offense to pursue. ”
Didn’t consider that serious? Just goes to show how little the “authorities” care about the public.
“And Otting complained about what he said were Palmer’s late payments on her lease, and other related transgressions”
The plot thickens…..
“two of the victims are understood to have even put up money in connection with ongoing efforts to secure bail for her so she can be released from jail, ”
If she goes to jail, they have the potential to loose all of their “investment”
Haven’t seen much on James Stewart, other than on this blog and Vanderplatz (sp) link. Information about Sharon Palmer’s past ‘business dealings’ is in the public domain and speaks for itself.
I’d argue that Sharon Palmer doesn’t much care for her community and honesty. James doesn’t much care for the food community if he let her sell outsourced eggs and didn’t tell his food club members.
Outsourcing is less of a crime than real estate fraud so they went after the charges that can stick. Even then, the DA requested ten charges be dropped because he felt he couldn’t prove them. I thought for sure you’d trump up that little bit of info. “In the beginning of his closing arguments in the preliminary hearing, prosecutor Chris Harman told the judge 10 overt acts in the criminal complaint couldn’t be proved and wanted them omitted.” http://m.vcstar.com/news/2012/mar/21/2-face-trial-in-raw-milk-farm-fraud-scheme/
Remember that we have not heard the last of these two and that if there ever is a trial in LA we will learn a whole lot more. My sense is Ventura took the real estate aspect and Los Angeles ran with the raw milk/food aspect.
Rebuttal from Sharon Palmer, supposedly she filed slandering and libeling against those responsible, whatever became of that? If what she says is true, the case would be a slam-dunk.
http://www.thecompletepatient.com/article/2011/october/13/i-can-explain-says-sharon-palmer-she-admits-outsourcing-eggs-not
“allegations made by food rights activist Aajonus Vonderplanitz that Palmer outsourced eggs and chickens that were made available to Rawesome members.
………I discussed the outsourcing accusations with Palmer, who said she could explain everything. She said she has been hesitant to go public because of an ongoing legal problem from the time she moved to Healthy Family Farm, in which local authorities filed charges against her for producing goat cheese without a permit.
She denied she was outsourcing chickens, but said she did outsource eggs for six or seven months in 2008 and 2009…with the partial knowledge of James Stewart, Rawesome’s manager. ”
Again, did the people who bought the eggs know they were outsourced? It appears to be doubtful. Not being upfront with consumers is a big deal to many.
“the Palmer outsourcing wasn’t handled in a transparent way by any means. Rawesome members should have been fully informed ”
Indeed they should have been informed. Selling without informing is fraud, deliberate withholding of information.
Hope you enjoy it.
I stand behind James Stewart 100%….trust me on this, the jury will laugh this out of court. It is a sham that our tax dollars are spent on raw milk inspired witch hunts and worse. If anything, this is civil case from debtors…it is not a criminal anything.
OPDC was toured by 50 members of a dairy group from Penn State. Among them were Elanco and Monsanto representatives. After the OPDC tour and the full disclosure of the CA raw milk market and our connection to our consumers….I almost needed a defibrillator. The dairymen in the group were all jazzed and had regained some hope for their futures. On arrival they looked like they were part of a funeral procession. They are getting about $2 less per CWT than their true costs. They shared with me that in 1980 there were 600,000 dairies in America….now there are 50,000 and falling fast. They said that they are going extinct and the processors are getting rich and fat as they die off.
Wonder why pasteurized milk is failing!??!
Oh let me list the reasons.
The more facts we get about this case, more obvious, that it’s been contrived as an oblique way to put the food buying club out of operation BECAUSE THEY WERE SUPPLYING RAW MILK
the bigger frame of reference is : Sharon Palmer was trying to get a land base so she could get some traction delivering high quality food. Those who stand to lose $$ as she succeeds, pulled strings to undo her. Would you prefer she, and all the rest of the people who want to see REAL MILK prosper, be relegated to being share-croppers + serfs, in the land our ancestors pioneered?
Since she has a prior record, I would expect higher bail and flight risk to be utilized. Sounds to me like she may be swindling people again and it involved Rawesome for whatever involvement he has. I’m doubting this last “raid” was about raw milk, It may have been a minor side issue, the main issue with the law appears to be fraud involving other peoples money.
As to her “high quality” food, she didn’t tell people she was out sourcing in the past, what’s to stop her in the future? It is still questionable if she was out sourcing more than just eggs… She has lost credibility.
in British Columbia, many years ago, in “another movie”, I got a judge to direct the Special Prosecutor to produce a “Bill of Particulars” In our present case, the Persecutor point-blank refuses to do so … instead, she put on paper that part of the allegation is = I breached the Court Order ( in an ongoing raw milk case) by holding a “Raw Milk Information Night” = holding a political meeting!
My co-accused ( Michael Schmidt) and I, and Sharon Palmer, and other POLITICAL ACTIVISTS around America, are being framed-up on bogus charges … NOT really for anything substantial, rather : for having the temerity to put REAL MILK in the hands of people and make them healthy.
no, she’s not in gaol formally charged with ‘false labelling’ … that would give the game away. What she’s done is the worst thing you can do in a communist regime, dissent from the Central party line
My understanding is that Palmer has never owned the land. She has a lease arrangement with Otting, whereby she pays the amount owed under the mortgage, plus taxes. Once the mortgage is paid, my understanding is she would gain ownership. The farm was purchased for about $2 million; perhaps Palmer was suggesting it had increased in value. I think the “hot potato” for Palmer is that these legal charges may make it impossible for her to gain ownership.
It’s a big deal to me. I spend a considerable amount of time and money to choose my foods. I traipse from farms to farmers markets every week for the food I want. I count on the direct contact with the farmers and I expect that what they are selling me is theirs. And when it is not, I expect them to label their products with the farm of origin.
Gordon said, “…false labelling is enough of a pretext to put someone in gaol, with a $1 million bail upset?”
Please do not play illogical games by asking if the fine and the jail are a proportionate response to fraud. Obviously they are not. I can still think the government reacted excessively, that they really are out to get raw milk, and this is wrong. At the same time, I can lose respect for an individual and not feel obliged to feel sorry for their plight. (Unlike say, Michael and Vernon who I did feel compelled to help.) There is no excuse or remedy for lying in this business–the real foods community is built on trust.
Gordon also said, “Those things are trivial against the massive fraud perpetrated upon the consumer in the aisles of commercial foodstores.”
And that is why I don’t buy ANY food in a supermarket. If you want to adopt supermarket “morals,” open a supermarket. If you outsource and you pawn it off as your own, you are lying to me and you are a fraud. I have no respect for you. When the farmer you trusted has supermarket morals, game over.
If any farmer is outsourcing, they owe it to their customers to be honest. If the other product really is just as good, then there should be no problem. I buy plenty of items at farm stands that come from other farmers, but they are clearly labeled so I can make my own decision about it. There is no shame in selling someone else’s products. There is huge shame in trying to pass them off as your own.
I’m sorry if anyone thinks this is too harsh, but like I said, I spend A LOT of time and money to get local food from local farmers. Cooking from scratch and canning and freezing takes serious time. Nothing sucks more than feeling like you’ve been duped, particularly by someone who passed themselves off as trustworthy.
Deborah, we don’t have that feature right now. We’ll put it on the list of things to explore as worth doing.
David
The pink slime, bigger cages for chickens in Ca, the pig crates, etc…all have been pushed into changing because the masses were awakened to something distasteful regarding their food. As people have learned of the toxins in our foods, they slowly have grasped “organics”, farmers markets are growing, people are opening their eyes and demanding changes. Granted these changes can appear small, yet each step forward is a positive move towards better health and environment.
To those who know the facts: teach what is in the processed milk, how it is really processed (I’ve said before, most probably think the milk is piped from the cow to the separator to the pasteurizer and into jugs and trucked to the stores, they have no clue that the gal jug contains adulterated chemically added crap from 100s of cows) teach what they feed their cows, break it down into layman’s terms, teach about the importance of the pastures, the health of the cow, how long a cow SHOULD live, the diseases that are caused by the feed/environment the cows live in…. the teaching is long and much needed.
Not to long ago, it never entered my mind that the whole milk I bought in the store was adulterated, especially to the degree it really is. I thought it was just plain boiled milk and nothing more.
To change the dairy industry, you must awaken the masses to what the facts are. They will then join forces to push for change. There is power in numbers.
Amen, Sophie. I hope people can understand where Sophie is coming from as this is exactly the reason I wrote my blog.
Nevertheless, arguing about it here isn’t going to change the outcome.
I’m very curious, if you would be so kind as to help me understand, what they wanted with your operation? Since you have one that provides raw milk, and since the milk can’t be messed up, I’m curious what they were looking at/for.
http://www.marlerblog.com/case-news/claravale-farm-recalls-raw-milk-due-to-campylobacter-risk/
I am impressed that Claravale has taken this seriously and has not played the “blame the consumer” game that we’ve seen in California in the past. I hope it’s a new era.
There was never a campylobacter recall in 2008 at OPDC…..what are you talking about???
Milk Fan,
The reason that Elanco and Monsanto and Land O Lakes was touring CA with a group of 45 Penn State dairymen….was to visit all kinds of dairy operations and gain knowledge. They also visited several other dairies and cheese plants. The visit to OPDC was just a small part of the larger tour experience.
James had become exasperated with Ron Garthwaite and his 12 cows….James needed more milk and he wanted organic certified and pasture fed cows. OPDC was milking 250 cows and was very interested in developing the raw milk market. Ron was not interested in added cows and James was not happy.
There was no conspiracy at all. James just dropped Claravale and closed ranks with a young and committed OPDC. That is the whole story.
The recall for cream in 2008 did not effect other products. There was no recall of all OPDC products in 2008. There were no illnesses connected to the discovery of some campy in one sample of cream after nearly 14 days of culturing. Remember that CDFA screwed up and sent the samples to the wrong lab and had to redirect them after a week in the wrong lab ( Sacramento verses San Bernadino ) this was a huge screw up and CDFA had egg on their face. The 2008 matter was not treated like a standard recall with all products recalled. Cream was back on the shelf in a couple of days and there was not a recall of all products.
Maybe I have the year wrong but I believe it was in Sep 2008 when your cream was recalled. There were no illnesses linked. That’s my point — there can be a recall without illnesses.
Interestingly, there can be illnesses without recalls — your campy cluster in 2007 is a good case in point.
Amanda
Roll your eyes all you want … sabotage is a more likely cause of the presence of campylobacter – IF that’s a fact, versus the outright lie told about us, in 2009, by the Health Authorities in BC – than it being generated by the dairy. Far-fetched ? find out for yourself what’s being dumped over the country in the chemtrails … as acknowledged in the materials we wrung out of the manufacturer of Foray 48B = the so-called “Gypsy Moth spray”
“kristin konvolinka
03/24/2012
8:20AM
While food safety is, of course, extremely important; reporting of data linking the consumption of raw milk to infections is very skewed. For example, you mentioned the recalls of Organic Patures’ milk in 2006 and 2011. After further inspection, their milk was found to be uncontaminated, hence there was no relationship found between the illnesses and OPD milk. In 2006 I believe they were awarded monetary damages for the unsubstantiated recall. That’s a pretty relevent piece of information.
I think it’s also important to say, that even as of today, after 80 years of producing raw unpasteurized milk, Claravale dairy milk has never sickened anyone.
And think about this:
Based on data in a 2003 USDA/FDA report: Compared to raw milk there are 515 times more illnesses from L-mono due to deli meats and 29 times more illness from L-mono due to pasteurized milk.(Intrepretive Summary Listeria Monocytogenes Risk Assessment, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Sept. 2003, page 17).
and…
pasteurized milk has caused many serious outbreaks of illness. In 2006 there were 52 confirmed cases of C. jejuni infections in California, in 1984, 3 outbreaks of S. tymphimuim (antimicrobial resistant) resulted in 16,284 confirmed cases of illness. And most recently, in 2007, three people died in Massachusetts from illness caused by contaminated pasteurized milk.
That said, both pasteurized and raw milk have low rates of causing illness compared to fruits & veggies (719 illness in 15 outbreaks) and salad (1104 illnesses in 21 outbreaks)MMWR Mar 2, 2000:49(SS01);1-51…and that was just in 1997.
I think an honest look at the infections really caused by raw milk (not the accusations lobbed at them that did not stick) compared to the pathogens and illnesses caused by pasteurized milk, vegetables and meat…you will find that raw milk is relatively safe.”
Glass bottles come to mind. I know that when OPDC used glass, they were very difficult to clean. Biofilms can certainly be laid down inside of a glass bottle. We saw this often in 2004. It was a major challenge. Claravale is also pasteurizing an ice-cream product and milking goats….it is a very busy little place. When a business gets very busy and has new products,the challenge of the simple high priority challenges can be lost in the busyness. OPDC uses recyclable #2 HDPE plastic and the serious hassle of creating a clean bottle has been a real relief for the last 8 years. Not to mention a very green solution to the cost of diesel to carry heavy glass in half filled trucks back andvforth to the stores. Yes…..when you use glass, only half as much milk can go on the truck….the rest is dead weight…glass. Glass is also a huge accounting hassle with all the deposits and returns. .The #5 plastic cap used by Stanpak ( the glass bottle maker ) leaches like crazy.
I really wish Ron would come out and speak to his customers and all of us. Claravale is an 87 year old American raw milk sweetheart brand. My heart goes out to Claravale….. A recall is tough and sends your soul to a place of introspection and demands thought and creative change.
As much as I hate to admit this….I find your website a pretty good tool and resource when investigating and researching state by state raw milk standards for the USA.
I do object to your quantum assumption and conclusions. The link between five kids and OPDC products was not made….the link between five kids stool specimens and our calf area was made. In reading the final CADPH report even that conclusion is brougt into question. The very same DNA fingerprint and pathogen that was found in our calf area was also found all around CA and America. with the huge numbers of consumers drinking OP in CA and the fact that 47 other people had STEC during the same time period last summer….
My confidence in the conclusions made by the DPH report is shaken. When the last words state….an educational effort should be made to keep people from drinking Raw Milk. If this is not bias nothing is… Read the spinach report…..read the reports on cantaloupe. The conclusions do not recommend an educational initiative to stop cantaloupe or spinach consumption. The Whittier Farms report did not say stop drinking pasteurized milk.
When one part of a scientific report is highly biased….it must be assumed that it is all biased. Scientists are supposed to be scientists….not protectors of the pasteurized milk markets. One more thing….if the CA DPH report is worthy and the FDA is a trusted agency, then why did the OPDC sales climb by 20% since 12-17-2011. It appears that the CA consumers trust their farmer and do not trust the FDA or FOOD Inc protectors.
The fall in the numbers of conventional dairies and the fall in consumption of pasteurized milk tell us all the truth. More and more People can not drink pasteurized milk….cold hard fact.
In the Claravale case, IF there is a link, it’s likely because milk can sometimes be contaminated. The series of outbreaks tied to OPDC’s plastic bottles are a testimony to that fact.
Amanda
I know this must be difficult for Claravale and I am sympathetic for the hell they must be going through to solve this issue.
As far as not knowing where the campylobacter is coming from on this last test, I think the answer must lie within the fact that only the cream tested bad. Cream comes from milk so the milk should also test bad. So my suspicion is that the cream glass or the cream separation process is the link to the problem. Cream storage containers or tanks, or the cream separator could be a likely culprit. . Again we would need to know if the cream and milk tested were out of the same bulk tank batch. If not we are back to a possible problem in bottling.
I wish the folks a Claravale well with a speedy solution.