The McBee Dynasty brothers vowed to show “the good, the bad, the ugly” on their reality show — including their unfiltered reactions to dad Steve McBee’s FBI investigation.
“It’s really, really tough because that is constantly at the forefront of your mind, no matter what you’re doing,” eldest son Steven McBee Jr. exclusively told Us Weekly of his dad’s legal troubles. “Even when I’m lying in bed at night, or even if I’m busy hanging out with my brothers out at a restaurant, you’re always thinking about that.”
Steven, the CEO of McBee Farm & Cattle, noted that fans will get to see how each brother learned about their dad’s possible jail time after he kept it a secret for some time. The second oldest brother, Jesse McBee, for example, heard about the issue on camera.
“It was a shell shock just seeing the weight that Steven had been [dealing with],” Jesse exclusively told Us on Thursday, July 11. “It made a lot of things make a lot more sense, just the way that Steven was stressed out and we were trying to figure out why we thought we knew all of his stresses, and obviously he was holding that in and bearing that weight on his shoulders.”
Jesse explained, “It was a shell shock, and I think you’ll probably see that on camera, just how surprised Cole [McBee] and I were. Just our reactions and basically how we’re going to move forward from it now.” (Steve shares sons Steven, Jesse, Cole and Brayden McBee with ex-wife Kristi McBee.)
After the cameras wrapped on season 1 of The McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys, drama unfolded behind the scenes. Steve pleaded guilty to a multimillion-dollar fraud scam in November 2024 related to crop insurance.
Steve, who started McBee Farms in the ‘90s, was charged with one count of federal crop insurance fraud. He allegedly acquired insurance benefits on his crops that he wasn’t authorized to receive.
Steve allegedly made a false report to insurance provider Rain and Hill in 2018, which led to him receiving more than $2.6 million in federal crop insurance benefits. The Department of Justice claimed that Steve committed additional fraud in 2019 and 2020 for not disclosing that he chose to double crop in his soybean farms with wheat.
According to season 2 of the Bravo series, Steve left the farm in the hands of his four sons — with Steven in charge alongside Steve’s ex-girlfriend and CFO and COO Galyna Saltkosvska — while dealing with the scandal off camera. However, during the Monday, July 14, episode, Steven revealed that he was the only son who knew their dad was under investigation.
“My dad is under FBI investigation, and you are the only one, and my mom that even knows this is going on. So, this has to stay between us,” Steven told Galyna during the episode.
Steven later told the cameras, “This FBI investigation is wearing on my dad. He didn’t want anything with his involvement affect[ing] any of us boys. My brothers don’t even know about it.”
Steve, for his part, is awaiting his sentencing after being ordered to pay restitution in November 2024. The exact amount that he owes will be determined in court later this year, as will his possible prison sentence — which could be up to 30 years.
As the McBees wait to see what’s next for their dad, Steven and Jesse told Us they are focusing on the good times. One of their recent highs is the addition of two grandchildren: Jesse’s daughter, Summer, who was born in April, and Cole’s daughter, Blair, born in December 2024.
“We’ve leaned into family. We take it day by day,” Steven told Us of their current mindset. “The situation is still ongoing. We’re hoping to have it wrapped up and have some finality to it before the end of the year. That’s the goal, just so we can move on and say, ‘OK, we’ve got this figured out. We can start life again now.’”
Steven noted they’ve become “closer” as a family because of the legal ordeal, confirming that having babies around has been a blessing.
“The hard part about it is it’s so unknown. We don’t know what it’s going to look like, so we’re preparing,” Steven explained. “We’re eating dinner together as a family with my dad, including my mom driving up to the farm three to four nights a week, enjoying the time with the grand babies. Just really cherishing time as a family because we don’t know what it’s going to look like afterwards.”
Jesse added that their father was “a huge family guy” before his legal woes, but added that his commitment to his family has only grown during this tumultuous time.
He told Us that Steve is now focused on controlling what he can, including “spending time with family, being as close as you can with them and just enjoying the little things that he’s worked his entire life.”
Steven concluded that the legal battle, which is set to be resolved in September, has given the whole family “a new level of what’s important in life.”
He confessed, “[It’s given us] a new priority list of, ‘Hey, the businesses. Yeah, we love the businesses, but what’s more important than that is spending time together as a family.’ We’ve made the best out of a really rough situation.”
The McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys airs on Bravo Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.
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