USAO, Eastern District of California- Press Release

Summary

On March 27, 2012, Kulwant Singh Gill was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, California, for devising a scheme to defraud unsuspecting motor carriers who shipped goods across state lines and were not subsequently paid for transporting the loads.  The Court sentenced Mr. Gill to 10 years, 8 months in prison, and ordered him to pay $376,765 in restitution to his victims.  Mr. Gill was also ordered to enter a 500-hour Bureau of Prisons substance abuse treatment program and at the conclusion of his prison sentence, Mr. Gill will be placed on probation for 36 months. 

The investigation disclosed that during 2004 and 2005, Mr. Gill submitted applications for motor carrier broker licenses to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), using false names, social security numbers, and driver's license numbers.  Additionally, between 2002 and 2005, Mr. Gill used Internet-based "loadposting" boards to find freight loads that were available for transport and would offer to transport those loads for a fixed price.  He would then re-post those loads on the same or different web sites, acting as a broker, to find another trucking company willing to transport the freight.  In over 100 instances, Mr. Gill found trucking companies to deliver the freight, allowed them to make the deliveries, and then received payment from the original brokers who believed Mr. Gill had completed the deliveries himself. Mr. Gill then refused to pay the trucking companies who actually transported the freight, keeping the money for himself.  In 2006, OIG agents executed a search warrant at an interstate broker business and interstate motor carrier owned and operated by Mr. Gill.  During the search, Mr. Gill was arrested on charges related to his defrauding motor carriers and he was subsequently indicted on five counts of wire fraud.  In 2007, OIG determined that Mr. Gill continued his scheme in the exact same manner, even after having been previously indicted.  Additional charges against Mr. Gill were subsequently added in a superseding Indictment. 

OIG conducted this investigation, with assistance provided by FMCSA.