IOWA
Peoria Journal Star
By RYAN J. FOLEY
The Associated Press
Posted Jan 30, 2012
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa —
Federal bankruptcy officials in Iowa were bailed out of the llama business Monday, two weeks after they unwittingly got into it.
In a highly unusual proceeding, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Paul Kilburg approved the “fire sale” of 18 llamas seized Jan. 16 from Ryan Patrick Scott, a self-proclaimed priest who accumulated a litany of financial problems and aliases as he bounced from Wisconsin to North Dakota to Illinois to Iowa in the last two decades.
The herd was immediately auctioned off for $7,500, and will go to the Iowa llama farmers who have been caring for them under federal supervision.
Authorities took control of the animals after Scott filed for bankruptcy in Iowa, where he led a religious community housed in a former county mental health institution in Independence. His group, which consists of a handful of followers and is disavowed by the Catholic Church, raised llamas and sold wool on the side before abandonin g the property. Scott left behind a similar operation last year in Galesburg, Ill., where a judge ordered his business to pay a former follower $161,000 for failing to pay back loans.
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