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Judge Kenneth Bell was planning on giving William Dalton Edwards a light sentence, perhaps just a few months in prison. But he felt he had to make an example of the 26-year-old Surry County man sitting before him.
“People are hurt,” Bell told Edwards, adding that he’d never quite seen crimes quite like those the defendant had pleaded guilty to. “This is the first case like this I’ve seen, and I want this sentence to be a deterrent.”
From April 2018 to October 2022, Edwards, who goes by his middle name, conspired with a Texas man to defraud several livestock markets in North Carolina and surrounding areas. Edwards, through his company Diamond L. Feeders, admitted to fraudulently obtaining more than 3,000 head of cattle before entering his guilty plea last August.
Even though Edwards had accepted responsibility for his crimes and even aided the federal government in its investigation, he also violated nearly every one of his bond conditions while awaiting sentencing—fraudulently obtaining dozens more animals as well as a couple of trailers, making him a recidivist before even being sentenced.
Now, he will spend two years in a federal prison.
Tales of the Old West glorify outlaws who cut fences and rounded up unsuspecting ranchers’ livestock, which would then be taken to market and sold before anything could be done about it. Today, the theft is slightly more sophisticated. Rather than daring raids, cattle are fraudulently purchased by traders who don’t have the money in the bank to back the transactions. They write bad checks to cover the purchases, then resell them as quickly as possible—using phony bank accounts to mask the fraud for as long as they can. But like so many other scams, everything comes crashing down eventually.
In every case, sales barns are left scrambling to cover the transaction. While payments are required by law to be made same-day, those business owners don’t hear that a payment has been returned until after the sale is complete. Because sales barns float every transaction until the payment clears, those owners are vulnerable.
“If we put up a million dollars one week and $200,000 doesn’t get paid to us, we have to make up for that money that doesn’t come in,” said Cleveland County Livestock Exchange owner Steven Matthews, one of Edwards’ victims. “That leaves us high and dry.”
The Man from Muenster
Most sales barns hold weekly auctions, where cows, pigs, goats, and sheep are sold to buyers who either take in and resell them for a profit, or send them to slaughter.
The auctions are a social affair. Ranchers line up in their trucks in the morning to unload their animals, which are then led through the alleys to holding pens. Then ranchers and prospective buyers gather in the auction house. It’s a place where they can trade notes on the business, joke, celebrate their wins, and lament their losses.
While auctions are usually rote, there’s still an air of excitement as the bidders wait to see the day’s lineup. No matter how many times they’ve done it, many buyers say there’s nothing like placing that winning bid. The animals are ushered—or sometimes forced—in and out of the caged sales ring so bidders can get a good look at them. Some panic, thrashing around with such impressive power that even the old hats take notice.
The stats for each animal are offered on TV screens: weight, vaccinations, and for pregnant females, gestation phase. As bidders stoically hold up their auction cards, an energetic voice speedily acknowledges bids, punctuating each sale with an authoritative “sold!”
Most buyers and sellers know each other, their reputations built over dozens of firm handshakes and honest deals through the years. But a reputation can be brought to ruin in short order.
Edwards comes from a family with a good name in state agricultural circles. Both his father and his grandfather traded cattle in North Carolina. Court documents note that Edwards “relied on [that] reputation” to get his foot in the door with the sales barns he’d eventually victimize.
Much of what he learned about the seedier side of the business seems to have come from Clint Sicking, an experienced conman from Texas, 15 years his senior. Edwards was just 16 when they met.
At that point, Sicking had already sullied his reputation in the Lone Star State. Like Edwards, he came from a family with a good reputation built over generations. The Sicking name is well-known in Muenster, Texas, a town of 1,536 an hour and a half north of Dallas, best known for a raucous Oktoberfest and robust cattle industry.
In January 2013, along with owning up to writing bad checks to cover transactions, Sicking admitted to buying and selling livestock while not being registered with the United States Department of Agriculture, which is required under federal law, and agreed to pay a $65,000 civil penalty and to stop trading cattle without a license.
Two years later, Sicking went into business with another Texan named Lloyd Walterscheid, who had acquired a ranch in Muenster that included about 120 head of cattle. When that venture soured, Walterscheid sued Sicking, who was driven into bankruptcy.
“This is the first case like this I’ve seen, and I want this sentence to be a deterrent.”
Judge Kenneth Bell
But Sicking persisted. Because he couldn’t legally buy and sell cattle without the USDA registration and was barred from getting one for five years, he set up companies under the names of friends and relatives—including his father, Herbert Sicking, who died in June 2021. That company, Oklatex, is among those he and Edwards used to move cattle, according to court documents.
According to Sicking’s indictment, in 2015 he bought more than 700 head of cattle under fictitious names in Texas; his employer at the time, Red River Livestock Market, did not authorize or know about the transactions. When the money never arrived, Red River’s investors were forced to pay out more than $465,000 to cover it.
After meeting Sicking in 2016, Edwards introduced himself to Matthews at the livestock exchange Matthews owns in Cleveland County, N.C. Matthews, 46, also manages the WNC Regional Livestock Market in Canton and is a doctor of veterinary medicine. He has been steeped in the industry his whole life and still lives on the family farm.
“When I was young, every time I was out of school, I’d always go to a sales barn,” he said. “That’s how I made my money to buy my first vehicle.”
Over the years, Matthews has worked with hundreds of ranchers and brokers looking to move cattle. To him, Edwards was just another ambitious young man, and his transactions seemed normal at first.
The Long Con
Soon, Edwards was buying animals weekly. After saying he’d been buying cows on behalf of a Texas buyer, he eventually told Matthews the cows were specifically for Red River Livestock Auction, and floated the idea of acting as a broker between Matthews and Sicking.
Matthews didn’t bite initially. He wanted to do some research on Sicking. Edwards provided names of cattlemen he claimed Sicking was working with in Oklahoma and Texas who Matthews knew had good reputations. Matthews said he took Edwards at his word and didn’t double-check.
Now he admits he “should have done more digging.”
Animals tend to be cheaper in the east, so those who have the equipment and gumption to transport them west to Texas and Oklahoma can turn a decent profit, upwards of 10 cents per pound, which adds up when transporting over 50,000 pounds of beef per run. Matthews didn’t typically like selling to another sales barn because it increases the likelihood of cows contracting a fatal illness. But Edwards and Sicking were buying, and it seemed like their call, he told The Assembly.
Edwards also began doing business with Marcus Harward, owner of the Harward Brothers and Stanley County livestock markets. Harward declined an interview with The Assembly.
Between April 2018 and October 2022, Sicking and Edwards repeatedly purchased between 60 and 80 head of cattle at a time from North Carolina sales barns and took them to barns in Texas or Oklahoma to be sold through one of Sicking’s LLCs, according to Edwards’ charging document. That included four occasions at the markets Matthews ran in October and November 2019, and 10 times from the two Harward ran from in September and October 2022.
Matthews said that after several normal transactions, a check bounced. Edwards and Sicking promised it was an anomaly. Then the next check bounced. This went on for several weeks, with the duo always promising they’d set things straight. On a few occasions, Sicking wired Matthews money, but never the full amount they owed—just enough for temporary placation. The two fraudulently obtained 83 head of cattle from Matthews, according to charging documents.
Many of those animals were sold to Lynn Burkhalter, a Texas cattleman Sicking had previously worked for. According to court documents, Burkhalter paid Sicking hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Burkhalter declined to comment for this story, saying that he was “tired of talking about it.”
Rare, But Not Unheard Of
Upon realizing Sicking and Edwards had no intention of paying what was owed, Matthews spoke with others who’d done business with the duo and had similar experiences. Matthews reported it to the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office in 2019, which immediately launched an investigation.
From 2022 to 2024, as the investigation progressed, Edwards was hit with multiple state charges in North Carolina, including writing bad checks and larceny of cattle, both felonies. Sicking also faced charges in Cleveland County, including writing bad checks and obtaining property under false pretenses, but charges were not pursued as the case was being handled by federal prosecutors at that point.
In July 2024, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina charged Edwards with one count of criminal conspiracy to transport stolen livestock using interstate commerce and impeding regulation of markets. According to the facts laid out in a charging document, the U.S. Attorney’s office claimed that Edwards conspired to commit fraud by “false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, and the intentional concealment of material facts.” The next day he agreed to plead guilty.
In August 2024, a federal grand jury indicted Sicking on a host of charges, including theft of livestock, bank fraud, transporting stolen animals using interstate commerce, and conspiracy. While he spent months going back and forth with the federal government, and the case even appeared to be headed toward a trial, he accepted a plea offer in March and now awaits sentencing.
The investigation included the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, local law enforcement, and agents from the USDA, Secret Service, FBI, and IRS, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Even after he was charged, Sicking returned to multiple sales barns in North Carolina and Georgia where he still owed money but was looking to buy cattle.
“He hid his face, but I got him out in the lobby and told him to get his butt out of there,” said the owner of the Georgia barn.
Matthews recalled seeing Sicking at the Cleveland County sales barn two weeks in a row. Instead of his usual cowboy hat and boots, Sicking was more understated, dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and a ballcap, he said. He avoided making eye contact.
“That’s the kind of guy he is,” Matthews said.
Edwards and Sicking’s preferred scam isn’t unheard of. Larger cattle fraud operations in Kentucky and Texas have made news in the last couple of years, with victims losing a total of over $100 million.
More recently, ranchers and sales barn owners from Texas to the East Coast are calling for justice after a new alleged scammer, Garrett Hill, sometimes under the alias Jared Smith, would take deposits via Cash App and other online fund transfers, and then ghost the victim without delivering the animals he’d promised. Following Hill’s May arrest, the Georgia Department of Agriculture Law Enforcement is asking other victims to come forward.
Matthews doesn’t think the scams are prevalent enough to have an impact on the larger market, but they can devastate a sales barn, especially one with tighter margins.
Although Harward didn’t speak on the record for this story, his wife, Patty Harward, read a letter to the court at Edwards’ sentencing. She noted that her husband bought his first livestock market at age 29, and now moves about 1,500 animals through his two businesses every week. Despite his success, the couple had to dig into their personal funds as a stopgap after Edwards’ and Sicking’s fraud. The “tremendous” losses will take “several years” to recoup, she said.
Macon County cattleman and North Carolina state Rep. Karl Gillespie said that he’s been aware of some scams here and there, but he believes the industry is reliable. It’s “old school” and relies largely on reputation—a person’s integrity is more important than any one transaction, he said. Gillespie, who represents the westernmost district in the state House and serves as majority whip, has 125 head of cattle and has been active in the industry since he’s been old enough to work.
He frequents Matthews’ sales barn in Canton, as well as ones in north Georgia and east Tennessee. If any of those markets—or the people who do business there—proved disreputable, or if there’s evidence of animals being treated inhumanely, he and other cattlemen would simply go somewhere else, he said.
Gillespie said he trusts others in the trade. People buy cows from him without laying eyes on the animals and he does likewise with other sellers.
“If I put one on a truck and deliver it to them, if there’s something that doesn’t meet their expectations, we’ll make it right,” he said.
And if someone does wrong, others will hear about it. He thinks that kind of mentality is what keeps the sales barns humming—no one can get away with a con for too long.
“It’s a huge industry, but it’s a small world, and if you do something to violate that trust, word spreads quickly,” he said. “You’re probably better off robbing a bank and getting away with it than this.”
Matthews admits he should have done more due diligence. He didn’t follow up on the references he was given for Sicking, and now he recommends that people pay for background checks if there’s any doubt.
While the USDA has a number of insurance programs for unforeseen crises, fraud isn’t one of them. In 2020, Congress added a provision to the Packers and Stockyards Act establishing a livestock dealer trust meant to provide financial protection for sellers who go unpaid after transactions. Although Edwards’ fraudulent transactions with Harward occurred after 2020, because Harward didn’t talk on the record, it’s unclear whether he recouped any of his losses through this trust.
In 2023, the USDA and a bipartisan group of attorneys general from 31 states, including North Carolina, launched a partnership to “enhance competition” and assist prosecutors in tackling anticompetitive market structures. The aim was to enhance the capacity of attorneys general to conduct “on-the-ground” assessments of consumer issues, improve coordination between state and federal authorities, and create more independent research programs in hopes of crafting better policy, although this effort serves to protect consumers, and it isn’t clear how well that worked.
Some Accountability
The quiet, sober vibe of courtroom 4B in Charlotte’s federal courthouse was a stark contrast from your average livestock auction. Edwards looked like a fish out of water as he entered the room on July 17, flanked by his loved ones. Dressed in khakis and a pressed white shirt, he stepped up to the defendant’s table alongside his attorney, W. Scott Harkey.
Federal investigators and a prosecutor sat at the other table. Among the others in the gallery listening intently were Wade Adams and his grown son who also works on the family farm. Adams, a candid and terse retired postal worker and farmer, told Judge Bell that he’d been introduced to Edwards last November by a mutual acquaintance. Adams didn’t elaborate whether he or Edwards’ acquaintance knew of his guilty plea.
Edwards visited Adams’ farm in Max Meadows, Virginia, and bartered to receive two horses in exchange for 243 rolls of hay. There were no problems with that transaction, Adams said.
“You’re probably better off robbing a bank and getting away with it than this.”
state Rep. Karl Gillespie
Then Edwards pitched the idea of taking some of Adams’ horses and cows and selling them on Facebook Marketplace, a common practice for smaller transactions, then splitting the profits.
“It was real good deal for all of us,” Adams said.
Then, in May of this year, after months of working together, one of Edwards’ checks for Wade’s cut following a sale bounced. Edwards promised to make things right. Adams decided to give him another chance in June, when he bought a couple of trailers from a farmer in Virginia that Edwards could clean up and sell for a profit. The $6,325 check for Adams’ cut from the sale of those trailers bounced.
Around the same time, Adams saw some of the 22 horses Edwards had picked up from his farm for sale on Edwards’ Facebook page, but he wasn’t told about the transactions. Adams was concerned about whether the horses Edwards had been sold without his knowledge. Edwards had avoided having Adams come out to the property for several weeks, so on June 16, Adams and his son made an unannounced visit.
Adams said he didn’t see Edwards, but that Edward’s father came out “madder than a hornet” and initially told them to leave his property. However, he ultimately agreed to let Adams and his son take the animals that belonged to them.
Only 10 of Adams’ horses were left. Adams reached out to the authorities, who began a criminal investigation into Edwards’ bounced check and Adams’ allegations of fraud. Although Adams didn’t say how much money he’d lost dealing with Edwards, he said he suffered serious financial harm and hoped to see Edwards go to prison.
Between his guilty plea in July 2024 and his sentencing hearing in July 2025, Edwards had been forbidden from leaving the state, doing any business that includes buying or selling livestock, and committing any additional crimes. (Edwards had also been charged with driving while impaired on June 17, another violation of his conditions.)
Edwards’ sentencing memo said his admission of wrongdoing on the earlier charges was to be looked upon favorably and could lead to a lighter sentence. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Savage argued at sentencing that his ongoing criminal conduct undermined prior cooperation.
Edwards’ lawyer countered, saying deference should still be given to the fact that Edwards turned over his phone and offered “comprehensive debriefings,” which the government considered “essential” to its pursuit of federal charges against Sicking.
While the judge agreed Edwards had taken responsibility, he still withdrew the mitigating factor from consideration. Edwards’ conduct on bond “undercut” his prior cooperation. “This court’s sentence would be less if you hadn’t done the same thing again while out on bond,” he said.
Bell sentenced Edwards to two years in federal prison, and ordered him to pay a total of about $333,000 in restitution to Matthews’ sales barn and three others.
Matthews is skeptical he’ll see any of that money anytime soon.
“It’s justice, but it doesn’t help us financially a whole lot,” Matthews said. “Still, it makes us feel better and proves to other people we can prosecute these people when they do this.”
Kyle Perrotti is the news editor at The Smoky Mountain News. He lives and works in the shadows of the Plott Balsams with his wife, Tiffani, and pup, Corby.