The owner of an Ohio trucking company pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud, admitting his role in a scheme to overbill shippers and consolidate shipments headed for Amazon warehouses and Bath & Body Works stores. The fraud cost the companies hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Gurtej “Gary” Singh, 48, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
According to court documents, Singh admitted to covertly opening sealed truck trailers and removing goods. He and others illegally consolidated loads to save on delivery costs and failed to deliver many of the products to their final destinations, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.
Singh worked from April 2018 to December 2019 as a warehouse manager at Cargo Solutions Express, a logistics company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. He later formed and managed three trucking companies, including Bhullar Transport Group, which he operated from January 2020 until May 2022, as well as Roadhawk Transportation and Show Time Carrier.
Federal prosecutors alleged Singh lied to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on his application for Bhullar Transport about his affiliation with Roadhawk Transportation and Show Time Carrier.
According to court documents, Singh’s trucking companies were affiliated with at least 10 other motor carriers that shared common owners, employees, drivers and equipment.
The documents state that Singh contracted with shippers and brokers to transport full truckloads, meaning the cargo could not be consolidated with other loads and the trailers were not supposed to be opened during transit.
However, prosecutors say Singh and others “removed whole locking mechanisms to keep seals intact or they broke seals and replaced them with new seals, then doctored shipping paperwork to reflect the new seal numbers.”
As a result of the consolidation scheme, federal prosecutors say, some of the cargo remained at the Columbus warehouse controlled by Singh and was never delivered to the receivers. The cargo included Bath & Body Works products and items from Amazon shipments.
Court documents state that in December 2018, Cargo Solutions Express picked up a load of Bath & Body Works products from Santa Clarita, California, to be delivered to Reynoldsburg, Ohio. While the load was delivered with the seal intact, indicating that the trailer door had not been opened, prosecutors claim that 10 pallets were missing, worth nearly $230,000.
The pallets were later recovered, along with other pallets of Amazon goods at the Cargo Solutions Express warehouse, after law enforcement obtained a search warrant, according to the U.S. attorney’s statement.
Singh was indicted by a grand jury in May 2023. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to steal from interstate shipments, two counts of stealing from an interstate shipment and one count of making a false statement but pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in a deal reached with prosecutors. His sentencing date has not been set.
It was not immediately clear whether others have been charged in the case.
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