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Report: Richie Farmer Set For Prison Release

richie farmer

Richie Farmer, the former Kentucky Wildcats basketball star and state agriculture commissioner, is set to be released from a federal prison.

Farmer’s father told WLEX-TV that he’ll be released from the facility in West Virginia on Friday and will be taken to a halfway house in Lexington.

In 2013, federal prosecutors accused Farmer of misusing state funds and using his elected position for personal gain. He pleaded guilty the next year and was sentenced in 2014 to 27 months in prison.

Farmer was a high school basketball star who was a key player for the Kentucky Wildcats in 1992 during one of the program's most iconic seasons.

In 2003, he was elected to his first of two consecutive terms as agriculture commissioner. He also ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor on a Republican slate with former Kentucky Senate President David Williams in 2011.

In addition to his prison sentence, Farmer was ordered to pay more than $100,000 in restitution.