KNOXVILLE, TENN.: Three former Pilot Flying J employees pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to taking part in a conspiracy to defraud customers out of diesel fuel rebates.
That brings the total to five who have admitted their roles in the scheme that became public with a massive raid on Pilot’s West Knoxville headquarters in April.
Pilot Flying J is the truck stop operator managed by Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam.
Holly Radford, who worked as a regional account representative at Pilot headquarters in Knoxville, admitted by agreement to one count of mail fraud in U.S. Court.
Earlier, co-worker Jay Stinnett entered a similar plea, and in the morning, Kevin Clark admitted to one count of mail fraud.
Clark worked as regional sales manager for Knoxville-based Pilot from 2008 to 2011. He negotiated diesel fuel price discounts to over-the-road trucking companies to induce the firms to buy diesel fuel, according to the government.
According to federal documents filed in April, Clark worked remotely and lived in Lee’s Summit, Mo., a suburb of Kansas City. He admitted that he approved checks shorting customers on fuel rebates.
Clark agreed to cooperate against others and is to be sentenced at a future date.
In May, Ashley Judd and Arnold “Arnie” Ralenkotter entered guilty pleas.
Judd, who worked as a direct sales representative at Pilot in Knoxville, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud by mailing rebate checks she knew undercut the actual amount owed by Pilot, the country’s largest truck stop chain, to customers.
Ralenkotter, a regional sales director based out of Hebron, Ky., confessed to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud for his approval for rebate checks and receiving monthly reports on actual rebates owed and proposed rip-offs, which he approved. Sometimes he slashed the rebates even further and, according to court records, once threatened an employee with losing an account and, therefore, sales commission, if the unnamed employee did not go along with the rebate rip-off scheme.
According to Clark’s plea agreement, from at least 2009 through April of this year, Clark would on a monthly basis direct Judd in Knoxville by telephone to “fraudulently reduce” some of his customers’ agreed upon diesel discounts by 2 or 3 cents a gallon. His customers didn’t know what he was doing, according to the agreement.
After Clark authorized the changes, Judd would send out the reduced rebate checks “to be mailed or sent by commercial carrier to targeted customers.”
Federal agents descended on Pilot headquarters in April with search warrants in an ongoing probe of fuel rebate ripoffs.
Judd quickly began cooperating, documents show. She provided authorities on the scene with a rebate tally sheet privately kept.