Where’s the Beef: Con Artist Turns Texas Cattle Industry Into $100M Playground

Tony Lyon’s ride to criminal infamy was doomed to failure out of the chute, but for several buck-wild months in 2015, the sticky-fingered Texas grifter turned the cattle industry into his own cash machine.

Fraud is the son of greed. 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. 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.

As 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. 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.

Born to Grift

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). 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. With so much gravy for the taking, MCM acquiesced to Lyon’s request, and set the fuse on its own collapse.

And in the shining interim between the checkbook acquisition and MCM’s bankruptcy, Lyon was reborn as a golden boy of the U.S. cattle market, hauling in millions of dollars with a wink. 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.

Bigger and Badder

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. He put others at ease, shedding his skin according to audience. “Tony looked like he just walked out of a feed store and had a rancher-type appearance, and that added to his credibility. He knew a little about everything and could talk to anybody about anything, and would be whatever he thought you wanted him to be. If you didn’t know he was a crook, it’d be hard not to like him,” describes TSCRA Special Ranger John Bradshaw.

lot livestock — In a mere matter of months, Lyon carried out at least $87 million in fake transactions centered on 50,000 head of cattle. (USDA NRCS)

TSCRA special rangers, an elite group of law enforcement officers, primarily investigate cattle theft and cattle-related agricultural crimes. The Association has 30 special rangers stationed throughout Texas and Oklahoma, either commissioned through the Texas Department of Public Safety or Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

In 2000, Lyon had a big hand in three livestock operations, all centered in Perrin, as owner of Lyon Cattle Co.; part owner of Cattlemen’s Enterprises; and part owner of D&L Cattle Co. “He genuinely knew cattle and farming, and could have made several hundred thousand dollars a year in legit income just doing things the right way, but he was only interested in being the biggest,” continues Bradshaw. “Just doing good was never enough for Tony. It’s like his moral compass is broke, and he’s not wired like most people.”

Lyon hatched a plan to turn loans obtained from Bank of America (BOA) in Amarillo into play money by wildly lying about cattle numbers. He gained a line of credit for each of his cattle companies, with the animals, feed inventory, and prepaid feed as collateral. In total, Lyon squeezed three loans out of BOA for $7.5 million, $1.3 million, and $600,000.

It was money for nothing, because the cattle didn’t exist—at least not in the quantities represented by Lyon. Each month, when filling out required borrowing base reports for BOA, he juiced the cattle numbers and kept the ruse rolling from June 13, 2000 to Jan. 20, 2001. In February 2001, BOA officials poked the numbers around Lyon’s loans, and caught scent of the rot. The Amarillo bank ordered Lyon to cease all sales and purchases, and began a top-to-bottom inspection, resulting in a jarring report: Lyon had cut a deep chasm between the true numbers and his monthly report claims.

According to a 2002 federal indictment filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Lyon Cattle Co. didn’t have 17,186 head valued at $8,914,219, but rather 5,423 head valued at $2,896,342. Likewise, Cattlemen’s Enterprises didn’t have 2,873 head valued at $1,733,351, but 1,221 head valued at $769,036. And D&L Cattle Co. followed the same track, possessing 1,136 head at a total of $707,398, instead of 1,331 head at a total of $789,430.

solo cow — “I didn’t get involved with him (Lyon) until 2011, and it became one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen in my career,” explains says TSCRA Special Ranger John Bradshaw. (USDA NRCS)

Nailed for making a false statement to a bank, Lyon copped a plea for a 37-month stay in the pen and $6,082,754.29 in restitution. For many criminals, the sting of prosecution and financial liability might have triggered a tempering effect, but for Lyon, lessons learned while fudging cattle numbers became a stepping stone to bigger and badder. The native son of Perrin, now an official graduate of the Texas school of charade, was about to turn a sideshow into a three-ring circus.

A Marriage Made in Hell

When his cell doors swung wide several years after the BOA theft, Lyon exited prison and made a beeline back to independent cattle marketing. In order to keep BOA’s fingers of restitution out of his honey pot, Lyon piggybacked on the checking account of parents, Owen and Monna Lyon, at Legend Bank in Decatur. According to a 2016 federal indictment of Lyon (U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas): “When Lyon received a payment related to his cattle business, O.L. (Owen) would deposit it into the Legend account. When Lyon’s cattle business needed to make a payment, M.L. (Monna) would sign the check.”

solo ranch — The check-kiting con required ever-increasing dollar amounts on each check to cover the heist, and when Lyon reached the $5 million mark, the numbers drew too much attention from the bank. (USDA NRCS)

Lyon was back to criminal escapades in short time, describes Bradshaw. “It wasn’t long before he was up to business as usual, holding a single group of cattle for three separate owners. Banks would come out to inspect for the different owners, but Tony scheduled the banks at different times, and each bank didn’t know the others had already been out there. The numbers appeared to be right, but when you put all three together it was chaos, and that was just one case he was never prosecuted for that the FBI dropped. I didn’t get involved with him until 2011, and it became one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen in my career.”

Indeed. At a sale barn in Graham, Texas, in 2011, Lyon crossed paths with Jason O’Connell, chief financial officer of aforementioned Midwestern Cattle Marketing (MCM), out of Sidney, Neb., and the pair shook on a business marriage made in hell. Still on the hook for roughly $6 million from his 2002 bust, Lyon was MCM’s new Texas point man to buy, transport, pasture, fatten and sell cattle.

Drop the Hammer

From Decatur to Breaking Ridge, and far beyond the Red River to Rattan, Okla., John Bradshaw covers 13 counties for TSCRA. With a personal background in agriculture and livestock, Bradshaw most often tackles common rustling or crimes of opportunity, i.e., a producer’s cattle stray to an adjacent property, but instead of calling the rightful owner, the neighbor shuttles the wandering cattle straight to the sale barn. Far less frequently, Bradshaw tracks white collar criminals crafting intricate schemes in the digital world, with almost no traditional paper trail to follow. However, the head-scratching Tony Lyon affair, packed with rabbit trails, was a category unto itself.

USDA livestock — MCM owned a herd of paper cattle with no backing except fraudulent invoices. (USDA NRCS)

As MCM rep, and despite being under a USDA ban from sale barn activity, Lyon’s legit role was to fill orders from ranchers for a given number of cattle. For example, MCM might call Lyon with a customer order to buy 200 steers. Lyon would enlist third-party buyers to enter sale barns, or buy from local ranchers, put the order together, and then ship the cattle to the buyer or a feed lot under the buyer’s name. All the while, Lyon used his parent’s account at Legend Bank.

As profit steadily rolled in, MCM’s confidence in Lyon’s competence grew in tandem. According to an affidavit from O’Connell, Lyon came clean about his past, detailing his BOA fraud and conviction. O’Connell, rose-colored lenses in place, expressed his willingness to give “second chances” and provided Lyon with continued latitude to conduct beef business.

O’Connell was warned about Lyon by TSCRA special rangers, and by USDA, according to Bradshaw—to no effect. “I contacted MCM and told them Tony already had a conviction, and that he was under investigation, and they said they’d fire him; they didn’t,” recalls Bradshaw. “They wouldn’t listen, and it was like watching a train wreck and not being able to stop it. In so many ways, we were forced to wait for Tony to drop the hammer.”

Money is Blindness

In late 2014, as Lyon gained traction at MCM, he claimed the system of mailing checks, invoices and approvals was a ball-and-chain time consumer, and that cattle purchases would be smoother if MCM bypassed the sale barns and dealt cattle directly through Lyon by providing a checkbook from MCM’s Point West Bank account. “Tony told them that if they’d give him a check book and a stamp, then there’d be no more time lost going back and forth,” Bradshaw describes. “MCM agreed and sent him a check book and a stamp to endorse. It was an incredible mistake by MCM and became the biggest moment of Tony’s criminal history.”

USDA boots — “Most people would have been eaten up with anxiety, but he (Lyon) thrived. I don’t know how the sunuvabuck didn’t get an ulcer,” says Bradshaw. (USDA NRCS)

A complaint filed by MCM in 2020 (Midwestern Cattle Marketing v. Legend Bank) provides more detail: “To accelerate the cattle transactions and transfer of funds, Tony Lyon (with authorization from the Lyons) and MCM provided each other with pre-authorized checks from their respective banks. MCM provided Tony Lyon with blank Points West checks and an MCM authorized signature stamp, and Tony Lyon (through Monna Lyon’s authorization) provided pre-signed Legend checks to MCM. This approach allowed Tony Lyon and MCM to send each other invoices for authorization to fill in the blank checks and deposit them in Points West or Legend (respectively). This arrangement essentially provided Tony Lyon with check-writing control to both accounts.”

Money is blindness, willful or not. After securing MCM’s trust, Lyon moved in for the kill, explains Bradshaw: “There’s no doubt in my mind this was a scam out of the gate. Tony saw all the angles going in, and he knew the process from start to finish...Tony had groomed MCM.”

Ping Pong over the Abyss

Brimming with confidence, Lyon was ready to go full throttle with the con. The final step was to tap a whale, and in late 2014, just when needed most, onto the scene waltzed the mysterious John George—a Texas titan of a cattle buyer from Fort Worth.

m-shot — “He will repeat these crimes again and this affects the entire cattle industry across the country. What he’s done makes it so much harder for the next honest guy in the cattle business to get a loan,” says Bradshaw. (TSCRA)

George was the Daddy Warbucks sought by Lyon. George was the owner of George Cattle Company (GCC). George was the ultimate shaker and mover in the cattle industry. George had full trust in Tony Lyon. George had an insatiable appetite for cattle investment and wanted as many head as MCM could touch. George, despite ticking every box of business perfection, was also Lyon’s imaginary friend, and a complete fantasy masked by the glint of coin.

Even the GCC address listed in Lyon’s paperwork was counterfeit. “You literally couldn’t drive to the place because he pulled the address outta thin air,” Bradshaw says. “Tony listed GCC’s location as 4 Cherry Road or something to that effect, but the county addresses had already gone to a 911 system. If MCM or anyone would have shown the address to law enforcement, we could have spotted the fake instantly.”

Lyon’s rigged game finally had all the players in position: a big roller in George, an MCM checkbook, an MCM signature stamp, and the leverage provided by Owen and Monna Lyon’s bank account. Boiled down, Lyon blew the opening whistle on a never-ending game of robbing Peter to pay Paul—a grand check-kiting scheme between the MCM account at Points West and the Lyon family account at Legend Bank. Check-kiting takes multiple forms, but Lyon deployed it is a high-wire con where money shuffled between the two accounts to bleed the float—the gap in time from when a check is submitted as payment to when a bank moves the money from the account.

“Things went nuts from right there,” Bradshaw exclaims. “MCM was about to watch almost $100 million flying through their account in a few months, more money that what is generated by the biggest outfits. Crazy money. There were red flags everywhere, but MCM chose not to see them, even though they’d been warned.”

Warned — “There’s no doubt in my mind this was a scam out of the gate. Tony saw all the angles going in, and he knew the process from start to finish...Tony had groomed MCM,” says John Bradshaw. (USDA NRCS)

In his reports to MCM, from Feb 4, 2015, to June 29, 2015, Lyon claimed 130-plus cattle purchases by George, but in plain fact, a fantasy cattle baron can only buy fantasy cattle. Lyon faxed fake, handwritten invoices to MCM from his parents’ home in Perrin. From the 2016 indictment: “Lyon made each MCM check payable to Owen Farms. Lyon told MCM that he would buy cattle on their behalf and resell them to GCC at a profit of a penny per pound. Lyon said he could speed up payments to MCM by sending them checks from Owen Farms’ Legend account, instead of having MCM wait for payment from GCC. Lyon said he’d get his money back when GCC paid.”

Lyon controlled all aspects of the cattle trade from pillar to post, including setting the sales prices and payment timing, and made sure each of the two bank accounts drank from the other. It was a total sleight-of-hand trick, and required Lyon to play ping pong over the abyss of the two accounts, navigating overdrafts and credits that ranged between $152,000 and $4.4 million, according to an MCM complaint. Each time he moved funds between the two bank accounts, Lyon dipped his fingers into each transaction—cash on the barrelhead.

A $5-Million Log

The manic cash-grab extended far past George and GCC. Lyon racked up inordinate amounts of money through side ventures, Bradshaw describes. “Tony would offer buyers lease land and wheat, totally separate from MCM, and cook the books. For example, he’d be getting money by transporting and managing 200 head that MCM had paid for four to five times—the exact same cattle. Sometimes he’d have to delay shipping because his numbers didn’t match. Maybe his customer A was supposed to ship out in June and customer B was scheduled to ship in September. That gave him several months to come up with the right amount of cattle in September, because all the numbers were make-believe.”

chocusda — “There were no cattle, there was no George Cattle Company, and there was no money to turn over,” O’Connell testified. (USDA NRCS)

MCM owned a herd of paper cattle with no backing except fraudulent invoices. “Tony was drinking through the fire hose, and he had to keep track of so many moving pieces and multiple stressors,” notes Bradshaw. “The juggling act of keeping those two bank accounts was unreal because he had to always make sure not to blow it. Most people would have been eaten up with anxiety, but he thrived. I don’t know how the sunuvabuck didn’t get an ulcer.”

Lyon was perpetually a single check from falling off the high-wire, but in a mere matter of months, he carried out at least $87 million in fake transactions centered on 50,000 head of cattle. It was a tremendously large stream of money, but the water would dam if a single log fell into the flow. In June 2015, that single log took the form of a $5 million check.

A Patterned Man

The check-kiting con required ever-increasing dollar amounts on each check to cover the heist, and when Lyon reached the $5 million mark, the numbers drew too much attention from the bank. On June 29, Points West (MCM’s account) held a $5 million check from Legend (the Lyon family account), and told MCM the cupboard was dry—no funds in the Legend account to cover the check. In sheer panic, MCM’s O’Connell burned highway all night to reach Texas, and heard the plain truth from Lyon: “There were no cattle, there was no George Cattle Company, and there was no money to turn over,” O’Connell testified. Finally, after months of hijinks, Lyon had stretched himself too thin, but in the process, he had single-handedly bankrupted MCM.

In short time, Bradshaw drove his TSCRA four-door, Ford F-150 to Lyon’s house, found Lyon standing in the driveway, and slapped on the cuffs. “He certainly had three to four accomplices, but there was never enough solid evidence to get them, and the feds chose not to file. As for Tony, I don’t know what his endgame was,” says Bradshaw. “Part of it was pure enjoyment and getting away with it. I know one thing for sure: He’d gotten in a narrow lane and the only way open was forward—no going back.”

In an echo of 2002, Lyon pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud and was sentenced to 120 months in prison and $5.1 million in restitution. Further, MCM sued Lyon and his parents (Owen and Monna) in 2017, and won a $23-plus million judgement. (Lyon still owes restitution from the 2002 case.)

Significantly, Bradshaw expects Lyon may be hit with additional penitentiary time, due to even more charges related to fraud. “He will repeat these crimes again and this affects the entire cattle industry across the country. What he’s done makes it so much harder for the next honest guy in the cattle business to get a loan.”

finalTL — “He (Tony) knew a little about everything and could talk to anybody about anything, and would be whatever he thought you wanted him to be. If you didn’t know he was a crook, it’d be hard not to like him,” describes Bradshaw. (USDA NRCS)

And was there an accounting of all the stolen money? “Tony lived large and these kind of cases tend to move toward cash that can’t be tracked and is easy to hide, and that’s what happened here,” Bradshaw adds. “I think he might have made off with several million dollars in cash that wasn’t traced.”

Bradshaw’s sentiments regarding Lyon are roughly summarized by a time-honored maxim: Sometimes it’s easier to peek inside the mind of a liar than a person who stands by the truth. “Tony’s a patterned man, and these type of guys don’t change,” concludes Bradshaw. “If he hadn’t got caught, he would have put an even bigger dent in the cattle industry. There’s no remorse in him, and if he gets out, he’ll figure out how to do this again.”