PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The owner of a now-defunct commercial trucking company who altered thousands of electronic entries in service records to conceal the actual drive time and “on-duty” time of the company’s drivers was sentenced Jan. 25 to three years’ probation — the first six months to be served in home incarceration with electronic monitoring — in addition to 50 hours of community service and a fine of $1,000.
U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) regulations, enforced by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), require accurate record keeping and operational requirements, including records related to drivers’ actual hours of service.
Damir Sisic, 30, of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, owner of the now-defunct Sisic Transport Service LLC (STS), previously admitted to the court that he routinely altered data collected by onboard electronic data-gathering devices installed in his trucks. As a result of his actions, the data failed to reflect the actual number of hours his drivers operated the vehicles.
Sisic owned about 11 commercial truck tractors and 10 box-style commercial trailers, and employed between seven and 10 drivers at a time. Each vehicle was equipped with an electronic device that recorded the truck’s location, along with the start and stop times of each vehicle. Sisic admitted to accessing and altering that data on thousands of occasions, concealing from the USDOT and FMCSA that his drivers were routinely exceeding the maximum number of driving hours and “on-duty” hours without the required off-duty hours, in violation of federal law.
According to court documents, Sisic provided altered driving records to a state trooper who was investigating the April 22, 2018, fatality in Oklahoma of an STS driver who was driving an STS truck. In addition, Sisic provided altered driving records for numerous STS drivers to an FMCSA investigator during a compliance review.
Sisic pleaded guilty Oct. 28, 2020, to conspiracy to falsify records, and was sentenced in January 2021 by U.S. District Court Judge Mary S. McElroy, according to U.S. Attorney Aaron L. Weisman and Special Agent in Charge Douglas Shoemaker, U.S. DOT, Office of Inspector General, Office of Investigations, Northeast Region. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ly T. Chin.
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