Trucking Company, Owner Sentenced In Driver Log Fraud Case

Topics:  Barry Sather Truck Service

USDOT Office of the Inspector General
January 22, 1999

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, January 22, 1998
Contact: Jeff Nelligan
Telephone: (202) 366-6312
OIG 1-99

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has announced that Barry Sather, and his company, Barry Sather Truck Service, Inc., of Brooklyn Park, Minn., were sentenced in United States District Court for falsifying driver’s logs, in violation of federal safety regulations.

Motor carrier safety is one of the OIG’s high priority programs and since January 1997, its investigations have resulted in 39 indictments, 32 convictions, and $1.6 million in fines, recoveries, and restitution.

Sather, 55, was sentenced on Dec. 23, 1998, to one year probation with 180 days of home detention and was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine for making false statements to the U.S. DOT. Barry Sather Truck Service was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to pay a $15,000 fine for conspiracy.

During a plea hearing in September, Sather and his company admitted that for approximately two years, beginning in January 1996, they conspired to make false statements and conceal material facts from the Federal Highway Administration. Sather admitted that he falsified driver’s logs regarding the hours that drivers had been operating tractor-trailers, paid certain expenses in cash in order to conceal the true source and location of the expenditures, falsified medical records regarding the physical qualifications of the drivers and forged doctors' signatures.

The case is the result of an investigation by OIG, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Motor Carriers, and the FBI.