The former owner of a Missouri trucking company has been sentenced to 108 months in prison for committing bank fraud, Clean Air Act violations and witness tampering.
On Tuesday, Feb. 11, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Missouri announced sentencing for Christopher Carroll.
The 55-year-old Farmington, Mo., resident was convicted in August 2024 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.
In addition to the nine-year prison sentence, Carroll was ordered to pay $3 million in restitution for his role in the fraudulent collection of pandemic relief loans.
“This prosecution reinforces our office’s priority of going after the worst pandemic fraudsters,” U.S. Attorney Sayler A. Fleming said. “People like Christopher Carroll took advantage of a once-in-a-generation crisis to enrich themselves at the expense of struggling Americans. This office will continue to make sure that defendants like Carroll are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
According to court records, Carroll and his partner, George Reed, submitted a fraudulent application for a $1.2 million Paycheck Protection Program loan in April 2020 for the time share exit company they ran, Square One Group LLC.
The loan application contained false statements, including using the names of Reed and Carroll’s wives as company owners to conceal Carroll’s status as a paroled felon – which would have prohibited his company from receiving PPP funds.
Rather than using the money to continue paying employees, Carroll bought trucks and land to start a trucking company. The pair then applied for loan forgiveness, falsely claiming that they’d spent the money on payroll and other permitted expenses.
They then sought a second loan of more than $1.6 million. When that loan was approved, Carroll and Reed took a total of $660,000 in “owner draws” from the company, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Reed pleaded guilty to bank fraud in September 2022 and admitted fraudulently applying for, obtaining and using the two PPP loans. As part of his guilty plea, he admitted that the company failed to pay a “significant number” of employees, despite the PPP loans, and that Carroll terminated the health insurance benefits of at least 17 employees.
Reed was sentenced last month to time served and ordered to pay $3 million in restitution.
“This latest conviction is the tip of the iceberg for this career criminal,” said FBI St. Louis Special Agent in Charge Ashley Johnson. “In addition to defrauding the taxpayer-funded loan program in this latest case, Chris Carroll bailed on customers to line his own pockets with the millions of dollars they paid him to help exit timeshares. Furthermore, Carroll’s violent criminal history includes being a convicted sex offender for forcible sodomy.”
In addition, Carroll’s former trucking company – Whiskey Dix Big Truck Repair LLC – was found guilty of 16 Clean Air Act violations, for which it was sentenced to three years of probation. LL
Credit: Source link
