Two farm managers who lied about the cause of a mass chicken death in order to claim insurance money have been given suspended prison sentences.
The Jeonju District Court on Tuesday sentenced the 61-year-old head of the feed and livestock division and the 57-year-old head of the management division at an agricultural firm in North Jeolla Province to six months in prison, suspended for one year, for insurance fraud.
According to prosecutors, the two managers faked the cause of the deaths of over 1,000 chickens at a breeder farm in July 2019, securing about 20 million won ($14,000) in insurance payouts.
The incident began when a worker mishandled a feeder, a machine that distributes feed. Too much feed was suddenly released, causing the chickens to rush toward the machine.
In the crush, 1,067 chickens died.
Although the managers knew the real cause, they told the worker to report that a circuit breaker failure had caused the feeder to malfunction instead. When the worker worried that surveillance footage would reveal the truth, the managers told him to edit the video to make it look like a power outage had occurred.
They also pressured employees to keep quiet, but a whistleblower eventually came forward, leading to their prosecution.
“The defendants deliberately fabricated and destroyed evidence to mislead the insurer, which makes this crime serious,” the court said.
“However, since they acted out of misplaced loyalty to the company rather than personal profit, and have already repaid the insurance money and interest, the court considers a suspended sentence appropriate.”
ssh@heraldcorp.com
