ALBANY, N.Y. — A trucking company owner has pled guilty to fraud and will spend his immediate future on in-home detention and probation.
Juller Perez Salcedo, 45, of Garfield, New Jersey, was sentenced to three years of probation, including six months of home detention, for conspiring to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud, and for tax evasion.
According to a release issued by the U.S Attorney’s office in New York’s Northern District, Salcedo admitted that “from at least 2015 to 2019 he co-owned a trucking company in New Jersey that transported products as a third-party contractor for a bedding company with a distribution facility in West Coxsackie, New York.”
In addition, Salcedo admitted that as part of the fraudulent scheme he paid kickbacks to the transportation manager of the bedding company, Leonard Hummel, in exchange for the use of the bedding company’s trucks and drivers to transport merchandise from West Coxsackie to Perez’s truck yard in Clifton, New Jersey.
These actions allowed Salcedo to avoid certain transportation costs.
Salcedo then fraudulently invoiced and received payment from the bedding company as if his trucking company had transported and delivered the merchandise from West Coxsackie — although Perez and his trucking company did not in fact transport the merchandise from West Coxsackie, according to the release.
The scheme resulted in the bedding company suffering $422,170.86 in losses.
Salcedo also confirmed that he evaded taxes between January 2014 and April 2018 by cashing gross receipts checks on behalf of his trucking business, providing false and incomplete information to tax preparers, and omitting the cashed checks, and filing false federal income tax returns. Salcedo evaded a total of $477,090 in taxes.
U.S. District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino also ordered Salcedo to pay $422,170.86 in restitution to the bedding company and $477,090.00 to the IRS, and separately ordered forfeiture of a money judgment totaling $422,170.86 in proceeds derived from the fraud.
Hummel previously pled guilty and was sentenced on May 17, 2024, to two years of probation for conspiring to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud. D’Agostino also ordered Hummel to pay $161,784 in restitution to the bedding company and ordered forfeiture of a money judgment totaling $17,000.
Bruce Guthrie is an award-winning journalist who has lived in three states including Arkansas, Missouri and Georgia. During his nearly 20-year career, Bruce has served as managing editor and sports editor for numerous publications. He and his wife, Dana, who is also a journalist, are based in Carrollton, Georgia.
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