On Monday, a group of Montana farmers filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Missoula against Jon Corzine, a former Democratic governor and U.S. senator from New Jersey, alleging Corzine and other executives from the collapsed commodity brokerage firm MF Global stole millions of dollars from their customers’ accounts. Corzine was the CEO of MF Global.
Three Montana farmers have filed the litigation on behalf of 38,000 former MF Global customers, according to ABC News. In a Billings Gazette story, Marty Klinker, a Fairfield farmer and lead plaintiff, used an appropriately agricultural term in describing the allegedly fraudulent behavior by MF Global executives: betting the farm.
“They bet the farm on European sovereign debt,” Klinker said in the Gazette. “I just didn’t realize it was my farm they were betting.”