Derek Wulf, running mate of Republican candidate for governor Zach Lahn, is under investigation by the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office, the Des Moines Register reported on Friday. The sheriff’s office “declined to comment on the nature of its investigation into Wulf,” the Register’s Tyler Jett wrote in his long, investigative story on Wulf’s legal problems.
Wulf is finishing his second term in the Iowa House representing parts of Black Hawk, Benton and Tama counties. He was chair of the House Agriculture Committee during the most recent session of the legislature. Wulf is a farmer and rancher, and lives in Black Hawk County with his wife and their two daughters.
The Lahn/Wulf campaign has not issued a press release on the Register’s reporting, although a campaign spokesperson did respond to questions from Jett and defended Wolf.
“Derek has been an Iowa First fighter for years in the legislature,” Lahn said in a statement, when he announced his selection of Wulf for lieutenant governor on June 12.
Since 2023, Wulf and his company, Shallow Creek Land & Livestock, have faced multiple lawsuits from former business partners and ex-employees, and on Tuesday, a judge ordered Wulf’s farm be placed in receivership “after an attorney for Webster City-based WCF Financial Bank wrote in a court motion that Wulf failed to provide a refinancing commitment letter from another bank.”
Jett noted that in July after reports of Wulf’s financial problems first surfaced, “Lahn’s campaign manager told the Register that ‘all of the debts to creditors have been paid in full’ and that Wulf expected to finish refinancing his farm ‘in the near future.’”
Around the same time, an attorney for Wulf assured WCF Financial’s attorney that Wulf would provide the lender with a letter from a bank that would show he had been offered a loan to cover his debt to WCF. Wulf did not, so the bank filed its request to put Wulf’s farm into receivership.
According to Jett, the current amount Wulf owes WCF isn’t disclosed in court documents, but the bank had provided Wulf with 19 lines of credit, and most of the loans were supposed to be repaid by the end of 2024.
“Principal and interest on the lines of credit amounted to $3.1 million as of early May, with the debt increasing by about $1,100 every day,” Jett wrote. “… The bank also closed Wulf’s checking account in November, when he was $584,000 in arrears, according to court documents.”
Although his WCF checking account was closed last November, Wulf wrote a check in February this year, and another in March. Both checks were to Heartland Co-Op. On March 30, after the second check bounced, an attorney for Heartland sent Wulf a letter warning, “Your efforts to make payments twice via [Automated Clearing House] from a bank account that was closed four months earlier are acts of fraud.”
In April, Heartland sued Wulf claiming he owed $10,000 plus interest on pig feed he had purchased but not paid for.
The Heartland attorney’s letter is not the only time accusations of fraud have come up this year. A May filing in WCF’s lawsuit accused Wulf of selling off livestock that had been part of the collateral Wulf put up for his loans without first informing the bank. WCF’s attorney characterized the sales as the equivalent of theft committed with the intent to defraud the bank.
In a statement to the Register, Lahn campaign spokesperson Dan Capodilupo rejected the allegations, calling them “outrageous and demonstrably false,” He also rejected the characterization of Wulf writing checks on an account that had been close the previous year as fraud. According to Capodilupo, Wulf was unaware WCF had closed his account. Capodilupo also claimed WCF closed Wulf’s checking account due to other problems the bank was having, and not because Wulf was $584,000 in arrears.
In an email to Register, Capodilupo also said, “We stand by our comment [from July about Wulf’s finances]: the debts have been paid, and the refinance is nearing completion.”
Jett also reported on other lawsuits filed against Wulf and spoke with some of the plaintiffs. The lawsuits have since been settled or dropped, and in some cases Wulf countersued. According to Lahn’s spokesperson Capodilupo, Wulf was not at fault in any of the cases and, in fact, had been wronged by the people suing him for unpaid wages and outstanding debts.
Capoldiupo also dismissed claims by people who spoke to the Register that Wulf is “a businessman who ignored messages for months and, when pushed into court, made false accusations to justify his actions,” calling them “disgruntled former employees or contractors.”
Wulf’s financial problems were already known, even though their extent wasn’t. Likewise, the extent of the legal actions surrounding Wulf weren’t widely known until Jett’s reporting was published by the Register. The Lahn campaign has tried to leverage Wulf’s problems to its advantage, claiming their lieutenant governor has firsthand understanding of what many Iowa farmers have been going through in recent years as net farm incomes for smaller farmers have plummeted and loan delinquency rates have grown. But farmers Jett interviewed rejected the idea that Wulf is a simple farmer on hard times.
Wulf, after all, was chair of the House Agriculture Committee during this year’s session. His two runs for the Iowa House were backed by the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and major agribusiness corporations. Even before becoming the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Wulf had powerful connections to political and agribusiness leaders in Iowa.
Farmers Ryan and Dena Zoske, who sued Wulf in February for failing to pay bills totaling $60,000, objected to the idea that Wulf is a typical farmer. (Iowa law required the Zoske to resolve their claim through a private mediation process, and Wulf eventually settled the case by paying them $45,000.)
“Your typical farmer doesn’t have lawsuits against him,” Dena told Jett.
“No. Not like that,” Ryan added.
Of course, it’s also not typical for a lieutenant governor candidate to be under active investigation by a county sheriff’s department, but Jett’s interviews with the Zoskes and other farmers about Wulf did not touch on that. It did include the immediate reactions of a few Wulf associates when they learned Lahn had chosen him as his running mate on June 12.
“Him of all people?” said Chad Zoske, an Eldora farmer who was moving cows across pastures with his brother when friends texted him.
“You have got to be kidding me,” said Kendra Prosser.
“My God,” said Tony Thompson, the former sheriff of Black Hawk County. “Does anyone pay attention to who they’re voting for?”
