Just shy of five years ago, federal agents with the IRS and the FBI raided the Knoxville, Tennessee, headquarters of Pilot Flying J, ordering employees not essential to daily operations to leave the premises, while the agents pilfered company documents and grabbed files from company computers.
That afternoon, April 15, 2013, it was unclear what the agents were looking for or what crimes Pilot and its employees were suspected of; the only concrete news was that its Knoxville headquarters were on lockdown. Three days later, court documents detailing the alleged crimes became public. The documents purported a sophisticated scam carried out by Pilot sales staffers and their assistants that authorities said intentionally cheated trucking companies out of millions of dollars owed to them by Pilot Flying J.
The accusations reverberated industry wide, shaking one of the industry’s largest and most vital suppliers of diesel fuel.
Now, however, with this month’s news that the company’s former president, Mark Hazelwood, had been found guilty of fraud and conspiracy and likely faces a jail term (sentencing is slated for June 27), the company appears on the cusp of being free from the ongoing legal woes that mounted in the wake of the scandal’s 2013 uncovering.
Pilot in a statement last week says it’s “committed to being a great partner to trucking companies,” acknowledging the steps it took in recent years to right its wrongs and absolve the civil and criminal cases brought against it.
That includes, in sum, nearly $180 million in payouts to trucking companies and in fines paid to the Department of Justice. In 2013, it agreed to an $85 million settlement with thousands of trucking companies, paying back what was owed to them along with 6 percent interest. The next year, it agreed to a $92 million settlement with federal prosecutors.
