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John Durham, the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced on Monday that Meriden resident Digby Kerr, 50, has been sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison, followed by three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to wire fraud for a scheme that defrauded manufacturing companies.
Kerr must also pay restitution of $603,489.30.
According to court documents and statements made in court, Kerr was the owner and operator of Transportation Cost Management (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.
From December 2016 through 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, emailed confirmation reports to the victim manufacturers that falsely represented that the manufacturers’ payments had been properly forwarded to the trucking companies.
Kerr pleaded guilty to the wire fraud charge on March 26 this year. He remains released on a $100,000 bond and is due to report to prison on July 23.
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