A bogus fleet owner has pled guilty to federal charges resulting from a double-brokering scheme in which he and other individuals allegedly cheated the actual truck operations that delivered the real freight for his fictitious fleet out of more than $500,000.
Dragan Simovski, operator of Freedom Transportation, Inc. pled guilty in U.S. District Court, Chicago, on Dec. 12 to wire fraud in connection, according to the Dept. of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General. Simovski had been indicted back in April 2013 and charged with both wire fraud and mail fraud related to the scheme.
A statement on the investigation that DOT posted online advised that “Simovski admitted that he and other individuals were involved in a double brokering scheme, where they falsely represented that Freedom Transportation would use its own trucks to transport freight, knowing that Freedom had no trucks.”
Simovski entered into contracts with companies on behalf of Freedom, promising to transport freight for those companies, said DOT.
“Simovski provided information about the freight loads to a co-conspirator broker knowing that the broker would find other companies to transport and deliver the freight,” per the statement .
“Simovski and the co-conspirator agreed that Freedom would bill the customers as if they had kept and performed the jobs, knowing that in many instances, they would not pay the companies that actually did the work,” the agency added.
DOT reported that the loss to the companies that “actually delivered the freight” amounted to approximately $532,000.
