US cop pleads guilty to nearly $11 million scam, the largest in Nebraska’s history

Craig Harbaugh, a former deputy sheriff of Wisconsin’s Dodge County, pleaded guilty to a nearly $11 million fraud scheme, potentially “one of the largest individual embezzlements in Nebraska history,” the federal prosecutors said on Monday. Harbaugh could get up to 20 years in federal prison and up to a $250,000 fine at his sentencing in May, The Washington Post reported.

The 50-year-old admitted this week falsifying purchase orders and contracts for his privately owned business ‘Tactical Solutions Gear’,  a federal firearms licensee with a former location in Fremont.

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With his fake documents, Harbaugh convinced people to invest in his business with the expectation that they would receive a big fat return.

He also claimed to work with 12 law enforcement agencies, however, he did business with none of them.

Harbaugh confessed in a guilty plea filed in Nebraska federal court, “effectively a Ponzi scheme.” His scam cost his six victims and one bank a combined loss of $10,979,214. Six investors lost more than $6 million and a federal bank lost the rest.

It is still not clear what happened to the money he stole. Nebraska Department of Justice Criminal Chief Michael Norris told The Washington Post “it would be premature” to disclose that information.