SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Feb. 3, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — A trucking company has been found guilty of fraud charges which included bribing FedEx workers with $320,000 for extra shipping runs and to lie about the company.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, the U.S. Attorneys Office for Utah said Friday the defendants and their co-conspirators’ bribes resulted in the Salt Lake Trucking Group (SLTG) receiving $108 million from FedEx over a ten-year period.
The defendants’ companies were among local contracted service providers that picked up and delivered FedEx semitrailers full of packages at the FedEx Ground Hub in North Salt Lake.
At the time of the conspiracy, the defendants, Yevgeny Felix Tuchinsky, 63, of Salt Lake County was also a resident of San Diego, California; Konstantin Mikhaylovich Tomilin, 54, of Salt Lake County was also a resident of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Tuchinsky and Tomilin owned and operated several trucking companies consolidated under SLTG.
The defendants and their co-conspirators also engaged in deceptive practices to conceal from FedEx that they were violating several FedEx policies and contractual provisions, prosecutors said. “And they bribed FedEx employees to help deceive FedEx and cover up their violations.”
Deceptive practices included creating shell companies and lying to FedEx about the true ownership of the companies, concealing from FedEx that SLTG owned and operated the shell companies sharing the same owners, assets, trucks, and employees.
“The defendants and their co-conspirators also lied to FedEx about dozens of SLTG drivers’ qualifications on FedEx applications. Further, the defendants and their co-conspirators failed to honestly report accidents to FedEx.
“As established at trial, had FedEx known about SLTG’s bribery, true size, ownership, false driver applications, and accidents, FedEx would have terminated SLTG and its subsidiaries as contracted service providers.”
“Before they delivered packages, these men and their teammates delivered cash bribes,” said Stephen Dent, Assistant U.S. Attorney, during trial. “Before their trucks pulled away from the hub to go on a run, they lied and they bribed to even get that run, $108 million by cheating.”
Tuchinsky personally gained $7 million, prosecutors said, and Tomilin personally gained over $4 million from the scheme from 2009 through 2019.
Their sentencing is set for May 20 before U.S. District Court Chief Judge Robert J. Shelby at the U. S. District Courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City. The case was investigated jointly by the FBI Salt Lake City Division, IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
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