High-stakes rustling

A year’s worth of work was loaded into a trailer and stolen away from Marvin Wagman’s ranch. Sixty head of cattle, worth $110,000 to $120,000, were stolen from Wagman’s property late in 2014 in Arpelar. Disappeared, vanished, gone — and left behind were very few clues to make sense of it all. A broken lock and a downed fence were the only things to suggest anything peculiar happened. But, something did happen, and Wagman is left with no other option than to absorb the loss and move on. “I worked all year for nothing, basically,” Wagman said. “I will break even for the year, if that.”
Wagman’s ranch is a timeless slice of midwestern Americana. Grassy fields and knolls, wooded patches, ponds, a solitary deer stand, and even a one-room rural school building last used decades ago, are all located on the property with a small creek snaking between it all. Cows lazily look up and stare at Wagman’s truck as he drives through a field in his pickup truck. It’s difficult to imagine the ranch as the location of such a high-value heist. In fact, little signifies anything wrong ever happened, other than the presence of a rifle resting at Wagman’s side as he drives. Cattle theft is a problem across Oklahoma. Gregg, the agriculture agent, said 1,500 head of cattle are reported stolen every year to the state agriculture department. “There’s several ways they can report it,” Gregg said. “They can call the sheriff’s office and they in turn call our office. The sheriff’s office has a map of which agent operates in their area.” Wagman called the sheriff’s department, which then called Gregg. Gregg maintains the investigation is still ongoing, but Wagman has all but given up after more than eight months without seeing any of his cattle returned. “It’s always an open investigation unless they (inspectors) find the cattle or arrest a suspect and it goes to trial,” Gregg said. “We may find evidence six months to a year down the road. We may make an arrest or conviction and they will confess to other thefts.” Gregg says roughly 40 percent of stolen cattle are returned — and most thefts are on a much smaller scale than Wagman’s case. Another Pittsburg County resident, Ronnie Allford, had nearly that number of cattle stolen from his property near Tannehill in November. Allford reported 51 head of calves missing to the Pittsburg County Sheriff’s Office at an estimated total value of $90,000. Compare Allford’s $90,000 loss to that of a bank robbery. The average amount of loot taken in 2011 per bank robbery, burglary or larceny was less than $8,500, according to the most recent numbers available from FBI records. Wagman had more than 12 times that amount stolen from him in the form of cattle. “It’s just a problem and I don’t know what to do about them,” Allford said. “These things (stolen cattle) are traded around and shipped hundreds of miles.”...more