Meriden Business Owner Sentenced For $600K Fraud Scheme

MERIDEN, CT — Meriden’s Digby Kerr, 50, who owned a transportation broker firm in Meriden, was sentenced this week to 12 months and one day in federal prison for defrauding four manufacturing companies of more than $600,000, according to authorities. Kerr was also sentenced to three years of supervised release following the prison term, U.S. States Attorney for Connecticut John H. Durham announced in a press release.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Kerr owned and operated Transportation Cost Management, LLC (“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.

“Between approximately December 2016 and 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,” according to a press release from the U.S. States Attorney’s Office. “TCM, at KERR’s direction, e-mailed confirmation reports to the victim manufacturers that falsely represented that the manufacturers’ payments had been properly forwarded to the trucking companies.”

Kerr was also ordered to pay restitution of $603,489.30. Kerr pleaded guilty on March 26 to one count of wire fraud. He is released on a $100,000 bond and was ordered to report to prison on July 23.

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