Shipping Company Transportation Manager Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison for Embezzling Hundreds of Thousands Through Altered Fuel Cards in the Names of Others

U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of New Jersey
October 20, 2010

TRENTON, NJ—The former transportation manager of a shipping company was sentenced today to 33 months in federal prison for embezzling in excess of $656,000 from his employer by making unauthorized automated teller machine (“ATM”) withdrawals using fuel cards that he ordered in the name of company truck drivers, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

Michael E. Hamm, 49, formerly of Flemington, N.J., and now residing in Lafayette, Ind., previously pleaded guilty on May 4, 2010, to a count of access device fraud before Chief United States District Judge Garrett E. Brown Jr. Chief Judge Brown also imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.

According to the Information to which Hamm pleaded guilty and statements made in court:

Between April 2007 and December 2009, Hamm worked as a transportation manager for a company with locations in New Jersey and elsewhere throughout the United States that operated a trucking fleet as part of its business. As part of his job responsibilities, Hamm managed and monitored the company’s relationship with COMDATA. COMDATA provided a fuel program to the company, which included fuel cards that company truck drivers could use to purchase fuel for their trucks. Hamm was responsible for requesting and activating these cards, distributing them to the truck drivers, and then reviewing and approving invoices that COMDATA issued to the company.

Hamm admitted that during the relevant period, he used his position to have additional fuel cards issued to some of the company’s truck drivers, and then altered the characteristics of the additional cards to allow for cash withdrawals at ATM machines. Instead of giving the additional cards to the truck drivers, Hamm used the cards to make unauthorized cash withdrawals from ATM machines in New Jersey and elsewhere, including near his home in Hunterdon County. Hamm further admitted that he altered the invoices that COMDATA issued to the company in order to conceal his conduct.

Between April 2007 and December, 2009, Hamm made approximately 888 unauthorized withdrawals using the cards, totaling $656,200 in cash and incurring $3,181.25 in related ATM fees.

In addition to the prison term, Chief Judge Brown sentenced Hamm to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay restitution to his former employer in the amount of $659.383.25—representing the $656,200 in unauthorized cash withdrawals as well as $3,181.25

in related ATM fees paid by Hamm’s employer. As part of his plea agreement, Hamm forfeited to the United States a 2009 Mercedes Benz CLS550, the proceeds of which are expected to go toward the restitution obligation.

U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Franklin Township Resident Agency, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Michael B. Ward in Newark, with the investigation leading to today’s sentence.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric M. Schweiker of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Trenton.