Senior U.S. District Judge Curtis L. Collier Jr. sentenced the final four women to be tried in the Pilot Flying J fraud case to probation and community service, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported.
14 Pilot Flying J employees pleaded guilty before the trial started. Now Mark Hazelwood, Scott Wombold, and Heather Jones join their former colleagues as newly minted felons.
Today prosecutors played a tape of former Pilot President Mark Hazelwood using the n-word and disparaging the citizens of Cleveland, Ohio, and Oakland, California. The other defendants asked the judge for separate trials, but he said a decision would have to wait.
Judge Collier has decided to let federal prosecutors play a “vile, despicable” tape of Mark Hazelwood’s racist rant against black people, the Cleveland Browns, and the entire population of Cleveland, Ohio.
Pilot CEO Jimmy Haslam III insists he had no knowledge of the fuel rebate fraud scheme his company perpetrated against thousands of its customers. But why does his name keep coming up in court?
Tuesday morning, Pilot’s army of defense lawyers got their chance to re-frame the case as one of government overreach, where federal prosecutors relied on dubious witnesses to tar Pilot’s executives with guilt-by-association.
On Monday in Chattanooga, federal prosecutors presented their opening arguments in the conspiracy and fraud trial of former Pilot Flying J employees Mark Hazelwood, Scott Wombold, Karen Mann, and Heather Jones.
Four more former Pilot Flying J executives formally pleaded guilty to charges related to the company’s alleged defrauding of carriers.
