Owner of Meriden Transportation Broker Firm Sentenced to Prison for $600,000 Fraud Scheme |
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Topics: Transportation Cost Management, Digby Kerr
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U.S. Attorney’s Office
District of Connecticut
18 June 2018
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
John H. Durham, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that DIGBY KERR, 50, of Meriden, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer in New Haven to 12 months and one day of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for defrauding four manufacturing companies of more than $600,000.
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.
Between approximately December 2016 and April 2017, KERR 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.
Judge Meyer ordered KERR to pay restitution of $603,489.30.
On March 26, 2018, KERR pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud.
KERR, who is released on a $100,000 bond, was ordered to report to prison on July 23.
This matter was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Avi M. Perry.