Following a years-long investigation, a Virginia trucking company and several of its executives have been indicted on 126 counts related to truck driver hours of service violations.
Trucking Company And Executives Face Conspiracy Charges
Beam Bros Trucking, Inc. as well as CEO Gerald Beam, vice president Garland Beam, manager of operations Shaun Beam, and CFO Nickolas Kozel were indicted in a U.S. District Court in Harrisonburg, Virginia on March 16, 2017. The charges that they face include conspiracy, falsifying records, false statements, wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy.
Beam Bros Trucking is one of the nation’s largest contract carriers for the U.S. Postal Service. In the past ten years, they have been paid more than half a billion dollars by the USPS.
Truck Drivers Say Supervisors Told Them To Falsify Logs
The indictment alleges that Beam Bros falsified driver’s record of duty logs dozens of times. It also accuses Beam Bros of imposing schedules on truck drivers that violated hours of service regulations. The FMCSA has investigated Beam Bros twice before for hours of service violations.
During a 2013 federal raid, a Beam Bros truck driver told investigators that a supervisor told him that “he needed to falsify his logbooks in order to receive his paycheck, meaning if he drove over the 11 hour rule, he had to make a new logbook and manipulate it to reflect 11 hours of driving. The witness recalled a specific occasion when his paycheck was not direct deposited into his bank account. One or two days later, he received a letter from Bean Brothers Trucking management at his residence, which stated he needed to falsify his logs in order to be paid…the witness stated that after he was involved in an accident, he called a supervisor and told him he was over his hours. The supervisor instructed him to falsify his logbook.”
The indictment also accuses Beam Bros of being in violation of the Service Contract Act for failing to pay federal contract employees for all hours they they work.
Beam Bros denies the allegations against them: “We are deeply disappointed that after almost seven years of investigation and extensive cooperation by Beam Brothers, the government has chosen to indict the company and its principals.”
The agencies investigating Beam Bros include the IRS Criminal Investigations division, the Department of Labor, the USPS, and the Department of Transportation.
An arraignment hearing is scheduled for March 30 at 10 a.m.