woman gets two years' prison for stealing meat
Contact: Peter Deegan
A Zwingle woman who helped steal and sell thousands of pounds of processed meat was sentenced on July 6, 2010, to 24 months’ in federal prison.
Patricia Patterson, age 43, from Zwingle, Iowa, received the prison term after a February 11, 2010, guilty plea to theft by fraud of property valued in excess of $1,000 from semi-trailers owned by a Minnesota trucking company.
In a plea agreement, Patterson admitted she stole and aided and abetted the theft of meat from interstate trucking shipments in 2006 and 2007. The meat was resold to people in and around Dubuque, Iowa.
Patterson was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge Linda R. Reade. Patterson was sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment. A special assessment of $100 was imposed, and she was ordered to make $375,114.84 in restitution. Patterson was also required to forfeit several hundred acres of farmland to the United States. She must also serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
Patterson was released on the bond previously set and is to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on September 1, 2010.
Patterson’s husband, James Patterson, was previously sentenced to 27 months imprisonment for the thefts, and her brother-in-law, Lloyd Patterson, is awaiting sentencing on related charges.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Richard L. Murphy and investigated by the Dubuque County Sheriff’s Office.
Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is CR 10-1002.
