By John Kingston of FreighWaves
Christopher Lee Carroll, the Missouri man who set up a trucking company as part of a broader scheme to fraudulently obtain loans under the pandemic-driven Paycheck Protection Plan, has been sentenced to nine years in federal prison.
A jury convicted Carroll in September of three counts of bank fraud, three counts of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act, 13 violations of the Clean Air Act and two counts of threatening a witness.
Carroll was convicted and sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. He was also ordered to pay restitution of $3 million.
Carroll and business partner George Reed owned a timeshare exit company, Square One Group. They submitted their request for a $1.2 million PPP loan, claiming in it that Square One was owned not by Carroll and Reed but by their spouses, according to a recap of the case released by the U.S. attorney’s office. As a convicted felon for earlier activities, Carroll would not have been eligible for a PPP loan.
Carroll used the money to set up a trucking company, Whiskey Dix Big Truck Repair LLC.
With the company established, the U.S. attorney said, Carroll and Reed applied for loan forgiveness, “claiming they’d spent the money on payroll and other permitted expenses.”
The pair applied for a second loan of $1.6 million. It was approved and they took $660,000 in what the U.S. attorney referred to as “owner draws.”
The charges of violating the Clean Air Act came from Carroll’s plan to disable emission-control equipment to increase the vehicles’ mileage.
“Carroll asked one employee to ‘take the fall’ for his crimes and told another that he would stop paying for the employee’s lawyer if he talked to federal agents, evidence and testimony showed,” according to the U.S. attorney. “Carroll did stop paying for the lawyer.”
In the sentencing memo, the U.S. attorney called Carroll a “consummate fraudster.” Previous convictions were for felonious restraint and forcible sodomy.
Unlike Carroll, who went to trial, Reed, 70, pleaded guilty in September 2022 to the charges lodged against him. His sentence at the time was for time served.
