Owner of Meriden Transportation Broker Firm Admits to Defrauding Manufacturing Companies

Topics:  Transportation Cost Management, Digby Kerr

U.S. Attorney’s Office
District of Connecticut
26 March 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

John H. Durham, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that DIGBY KERR, 50, of Meriden, waived his right to be indicted and pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer in New Haven to one count of wire fraud.

According to court documents and statements made in court, KERR owned and operated Transportation Cost Management, LLC (“TCM”), which was in the business of brokering shipping contracts between manufacturers and trucking companies. As part of its business, TCM would receive shipping invoices from trucking companies, process the invoices, and forward the billing information to the manufacturers. The manufacturers would transmit the payment funds to TCM for remittal to the trucking companies. TCM would then remit payment to the trucking companies and send confirmation reports to the manufacturers indicating that payment had been made to the trucking companies. The manufactures compensated TCM for providing this service.

In pleading guilty, KERR admitted that, between approximately December 2016 and April 2017, he and TCM failed to remit $603,489.30 in payment funds that TCM received from four manufacturers to the trucking companies that transported goods for those victim manufacturers. TCM, at KERR’s direction, e-mailed confirmation reports to the victim manufacturers that falsely represented that the manufacturers’ payments had been properly forwarded to the trucking companies.

Wire fraud carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years. Judge Meyer scheduled sentencing for June 18, 2018.

KERR was released on a $100,000 bond pending sentencing.

This matter is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Avi M. Perry.