odds & ends.6c

PITTSBURGH -- Call it the "Little Bo Peep" ploy.

A dairy farmer has admitted he tried to hide his assets, including 200 head of cattle, from creditors and federal agents by claiming he couldn't find them.

Vern E. Over has pleaded guilty to concealment of assets and bankruptcy fraud for selling livestock and equipment from his Clarion County dairy farm and then telling a bankruptcy trustee and FBI agents he didn't know where they went, according to court documents.

Over has also agreed to tell authorities what happened to the missing property.

According to court documents and his lawyer, Michael Witherel, Over sold some of the items after he filed for bankruptcy in 1994.

When his western Pennsylvania farm was being liquidated a year later to pay creditors, a bankruptcy trustee couldn't count the cattle, tractors, wagon, plows and other farm equipment because they were gone.

"There's no question that things were sold," Witherel said. "He's a good and decent man who shouldn't have done what he did and he's going to pay the price."