Federal prosecutors are still waging a war against the companies that sell emissions defeat devices and the people who install them. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri announced that a 55-year-old business owner was sentenced to 108 months in prison and ordered to pay $3 million in restitution for committing a long list of crimes that includes bank fraud and 13 violations of the Clean Air Act.
Missouri resident Christopher Lee Carroll was convicted 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, according to a statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. It sounds like most of these crimes are part of a spree that started in April 2020.
Court officials say Carroll and his business partner, George Reed, owned a timeshare exit company called Square One Group during the COVID-19 pandemic. They submitted a fraudulent application for a $1.2 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan and falsely claimed that their respective spouses owned the company to hide the fact that Carroll was a felon on parole. The loan application was approved, but Carroll used the money to start a trucking company called Whiskey Dix instead of using it to pay out-of-work employees and fund their health insurance.
The court also discovered that Carroll and Reed later applied for and received a second, $1.6 million loan and pocketed about $660,000 in “owner draws.” Here’s where the Clean Air Act comes into play: Whiskey Dix removed the emissions control equipment from its fleet of diesel trucks to save on fuel costs. When legal troubles began appearing, Carroll asked an employee to “take the fall” for his crimes and threatened to stop paying another employee’s legal fees if he spoke to federal agents, according to the court. He made good on that threat.
Officials from the FBI and the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division investigated the case. As for 70-year-old Reed, he pleaded guilty to bank fraud in September 2022. He was ordered to pay $3 million in restitution, and he was sentenced to time served in January 2025.
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