Trucking company owner admits to falsifying thousands of electronic entries in driver logs

The owner of a now-shuttered trucking company pled guilty in federal court to conspiracy charges related to a large-scale scheme to alter driver records.

On October 28, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that 29 year old Damir Sisic pleaded guilty to conspiracy to falsify records, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Rhode Island.

Sisic owned the defunct Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based trucking company Sisic Transport Service LLC.

Authorities say that Sisic admitted that he routinely altered data collected by onboard electronic data gathering devices installed in his trucks that reflected the actual number of hours his drivers operated the vehicles.

From the U.S. Attorney’s Office:

Sisic owned approximately eleven commercial truck tractors and ten box-style commercial trailers, and employed between seven and ten drivers at a time. Each vehicle was equipped with an electronic device that recorded the location of each truck, and the start and stop time of each vehicle. Sisic admitted that he accessed and altered that data on thousands of occasions. He admitted that he routinely concealed from the USDOT and FMCSA that his drivers were routinely exceeding the maximum number of driving hours and “on-duty” hours without the required off-duty hours, in violation of federal law.

Prosecutors said that following a fatal crash involving a Sisic Transport driver that occurred in Oklahoma on April 22, 2018, Sisic provided altered driving records to a state trooper investigating the incident. Sisic is also accused of providing faked driving records for multiple drivers to investigators during an FMCSA compliance review.

Sisic faces sentencing on January 7, 2021.