A Rolla man pleaded guilty to stealing livestock after an investigation by the Missouri State Highway Patrol.<\/p>\n
Melvin J. Fincher, 39, was arrested on Oct. 24, more than a year after the investigation began, by the MSHP Division of Drug and Crime Control’s Rural Crimes Investigation Unit.<\/p>\n
According to a news release from MSHP, the Rural Crimes Investigation Unit began investigating suspicious activity in July 2024 involving the sale of livestock and farm equipment in Phelps County. Texas authorities informed investigators about a cattle theft investigation involving 42 cows from a Texas livestock market between Aug. 10-11, 2024, according to the news release.<\/p>\n
Troopers said further investigation found the cattle, valued at $71,078, were received by Fincher in Phelps County, according to the release. During a property search, authorities also found USDA livestock tags matching the stolen cattle from Texas, according to the news release.<\/p>\n
Fincher was formally charged in December 2024 and sentenced to five years of supervised probation on Oct. 27, 2025. If he violates his probation, a sentence of 10 years in prison at the Missouri Department of Corrections will be imposed.<\/p>\n
Fincher also faces numerous charges in Dent, Polk and Nodaway counties for other related criminal offenses including identity theft, livestock theft and farm equipment theft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Rolla man pleaded guilty to stealing livestock after an investigation by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Melvin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[23499,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-37410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-midmissourinews","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}