Welcome to Black Sheep, a spin‑off of my serialized memoir, SMIRK. If you’re looking for SMIRK, here’s the link to the complete book. Black Sheep is where I now follow similar themes of fraud and folly in other companies, industries, and individuals.
A question nagged me while I was writing the “A Ponzi Scheme on the Prairie” series: How did the charismatic young frontman of the alleged cattle investment scheme, Josh Link, meet the business partner who helped launch Agridime?
Despite combing the internet and poring over court filings, what I could find out about the man spanned little more than a paragraph. His name was Jed Hansel Wood; he lived in Fort Worth, a city with deep ties to the cattle industry, where Agridime was based. He was in his 60s, roughly twice Link’s age. And he had some money — enough, at least, to back the venture and later hire himself a high-end defense attorney.
The address listed for him in court records turned up Google images of a modest ranch-style house built in the 1950s. A LinkedIn profile that appeared to be a geographic match lacked a photo and described the individual as a former aerospace engineer and logistics specialist, an upper-middle-class job at best. To the extent he had wealth, he was doing an excellent job of not flaunting it.
But criminal charges and the looming possibility of prison have a way of forcing even the quietest characters to reveal themselves. When I checked the docket recently, Wood had already made his move. Just six weeks after his arrest, he pleaded guilty. The decision might have been prompted by an honest urge to come clean, or a more self-serving instinct to lock down the best possible deal. Either way, it was bad news for Link.
