When process servers try to find him? His registered business addresses are virtual offices. His fleet manager says he’s “often not at the building.”

150 Total Crashes (All Time)

10 Fatalities

Ten people. Ten families.

86 Injuries

$889,630 Total FMCSA Fine Settlement

Largest single-carrier enforcement settlement in THE TEA intelligence database

350 Power Units at Peak

334 Drivers at Peak

Multiple states, multiple courts

Who is Dragos Sprinceana?

Born in 1979, Dragos Sprinceana is the founder, sole officer, sole director, and sole shareholder of DMG Consulting & Development, Inc., a motor carrier operating under DOT Number 2190975 and MC Number 748469, based in Elgin, Illinois. His company operated under the trade name “Goldcoast Logistics Group,” positioning itself as a premium, sophisticated freight operation.

Court records paint a different picture. A California court examining his deposition confirmed he “founded DMG, was the only person with management responsibility, and was the sole officer, director, and shareholder,” with sole authority over corporate distributions. He was the whole show. One man. One operation. One set of accountability.

That’s important because you cannot point fingers at the board of directors, the compliance committee, or the VP of Safety when things go wrong. There is no board. There is no committee. There is no VP. There is Dragos.

His last known address? 17686 Circle Pond Court, Boca Raton, Florida 33496. While his company’s headquarters sat at 2130 Point Boulevard, Suite 100, Elgin, Illinois, he reportedly was “often not at the building.” His fleet manager, Mike Bryson, accepted legal documents on his behalf because he ran the facility day to day. The principal? Somewhere in South Florida.

Also listed as a company contact: a person identified only as “IRYNA.” Courts have also referenced family members Gabriela Sprinceana and Gherghina Sprinceana as registered agents for affiliated entities.

The corporate empire

DMG Consulting & Development, Inc. is the flagship, but Sprinceana didn’t build just one company. He built a web. Here is every entity found connected to the Sprinceana network:

• DMG Consulting & Development, Inc. d/b/a Goldcoast Logistics Group, DOT 2190975, MC 748469 (CANCELLED 3/22/2023), Elgin, IL. The core motor carrier.
• GCG Logistics, Inc., Registered agent: Gherghina Sprinceana. Sprinceana listed as President/CEO. Virtual office in Scottsdale, AZ (7272 E. Indian School Rd., Suite 540) and Ajo, AZ (1248 N. 2nd Ave., Ste. G).
• Goldcoast Expediting, Inc., Registered agent: Gabriela Sprinceana. Registered address: 341 Dartmoor Ave., Romeoville, IL.
• United Global Freight, Inc., Registered agent: Gabriela Sprinceana. Address changed August 2024 to 100 Illinois St., Suite 200, St. Charles, IL.
• Goldcoast Financial, LLC, Registered agent: Dragos Sprinceana.
• Goldcoast Carriers, Inc., Registered agent: Marian Visan, 363 N. Grace St., Lombard, IL.
• 1425 Madeline Lane, LLC, a real estate holding entity in Elgin, IL.
• GCYC SIRENA 88 LLC, a Florida entity. Named in a 2025 federal lawsuit alongside Sprinceana and DMG. The name “GCYC” strongly suggests a yacht- or vessel-holding company.

This is the short list. Every one of those registered addresses, when process servers went looking, turned out to be either a virtual office, an executive suite, or a location where the principals were never present. As you’ll find shortly, it also turned out to be a dead driver who became the President of the company.

Create multiple entities, put family members on the paperwork, use virtual office addresses, and keep the beneficial owner (Dragos) at arm’s length from any single point of legal contact. It complicates the service of process. It dilutes liability. It frustrates creditors. Whether by design or circumstance, the result is the same: a structure that makes service of process difficult, dilutes liability across entities, and keeps the beneficial owner at arm’s length from any single point of accountability.

What FMCSA found

THE TEA platform shows two FMCSA enforcement cases on DMG’s record.

Case 1: IL-2021-0097-US1688

Closed: May 17, 2022 | Settlement: $791,640

Violation codes: 49 CFR §383.37(a) and §395.3(a)(3)(i)

• §383.37(a), Knowingly allowing or requiring a driver to operate a commercial motor vehicle WITHOUT a valid CDL. FMCSA defines ‘knowingly’ under §383.37(a) to include what a carrier ‘should have known.’ At an operation with 350 trucks and 334 drivers, the agency found that the standard was met twice.
• §395.3(a)(3)(i), Hours of Service violations. Drivers exceeded the maximum allowable driving time under the property-carrier HOS rules. Fatigued drivers. Trucks moving when they shouldn’t be.

The settlement on this single case? $791,640. That is, FMCSA is treating this company as a systemic offender.

Case 2: IL-2023-0120-US1713

Closed: October 19, 2023 | Settlement: $97,990

Violation codes: 49 CFR §382.215; §383.37(a); §392.2; §395.3(a)(3)(i)

• §382.215, Using a driver known to have tested positive for controlled substances. This means DMG was aware that a driver had a drug test failure and put them behind the wheel anyway. Federal regulations are explicit: a carrier cannot use a driver with a known positive test result until that driver completes return-to-duty protocols.
• §383.37(a), Again. Unlicensed drivers. In the second case. This is a repeat.
• §392.2, Operating a CMV in violation of state or local law. Moving violations at the carrier level.
• §395.3(a)(3)(i), Hours of Service. Again. Still.

The crash record: 150 crashes, 10 fatalities, 86 injuries

The crash data on the THE TEA platform shows an all-time record of 150 reported crashes involving DMG Consulting & Development vehicles. Ten fatalities. Eighty-six injuries.

Crash records visible in THE TEA show incidents in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Maine, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Texas. This isn’t a regional carrier with a local problem. These crashes are spread across the national freight network.

The California court case gives us a window into WHY. In deposition, Sprinceana himself testified:

No probationary period. No logbook monitoring. No one was assigned to watch whether drivers were following federal safety regulations. At a company with 334 drivers and 350 trucks.

The California court found this sufficient evidence of “conscious disregard” for safety, denying Sprinceana’s and DMG’s summary judgment motions. They go to trial. Plaintiffs argued for alter ego liability, meaning Sprinceana should be held personally, not just the corporate shell, responsible for the damages.

The alter ego argument centers on a legal concept called undercapitalization, the idea that a corporation was deliberately structured to be too thin on assets to pay its debts, so that the owner could walk away while victims and creditors are left holding the bag. Courts take a dim view of this when the evidence supports it.

Here, plaintiffs produced evidence of exactly that.

The Crashes, Year Over Year

The crash data, broken down year by year, reveals something more disturbing than a static count. It reveals a trajectory.

Nineteen crashes in the company’s earliest years. Twenty-five in 2020. Twenty-eight in 2021, when the first FMCSA enforcement case was already open. Then, in 2022: 44 crashes, 3 deaths, injury events in 20 states. That is the year GoldCoast Warehousing, Inc. was dissolved. The company was simultaneously its most dangerous and beginning to structurally dismantle.

The crash count drops in 2023, not because GoldCoast got safer, but because the federal government finally pulled the plug. The first Out of Service order came on August 27, 2023. By that point, 130 documented crashes had already happened. The trucks had already killed ten people.

The crash data tells a second story beyond the totals: specific trucks, identified by their license plates, appear in the FMCSA crash record more than once. The same vehicles crashed, were apparently returned to service, and crashed again. Sometimes years later. Sometimes in different states. Sometimes, fatally the second time.

Plate 2910364 is the one that demands specific attention. That truck appeared in an Oklahoma crash in May 2021 with no fatalities recorded. FMCSA had already opened its first enforcement case against DMG the month before. The truck kept rolling. Seven hundred and ninety-one days later, on July 10, 2023, the same plate appeared at an intersection in Mount Holly Springs, Pennsylvania, where it struck and killed Leonard G. Mortorff, a 74-year-old motorcyclist. That was 37 days before the FMCSA issued its first Out-of-Service order.

And plate P962101 is the ghost crash: August 14, 2024, Greenwich Township, Pennsylvania. Three hundred and fifty-two days after the first OOS order declared this company unfit to operate. The trucks had been ordered off the road. That one apparently missed the memo.

The FMCSA crash database lists 86 injuries associated with DMG Consulting / GoldCoast Logistics. That number reflects crashes that happened on public roads, events serious enough to require a police report, reportable under federal safety regulations, and visible to any carrier intelligence platform.

It does not count what happened inside GoldCoast’s yards. On its loading docks. In its warehouse. On the terminal property. Those injuries are invisible to FMCSA. They live in a different database, in a different state agency, in a courthouse system most people never look at.

The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission CompFile portal shows seven cases filed against DMG Consulting & Development, Inc. d/b/a GoldCoast Logistics Group. The accident dates span March 25, 2021, through January 3, 2024. Not one of these cases generated a single news story. Not one of these workers, or their families, has ever been named in coverage of this company.

What worker injuries say

Five of the seven cases used a specific petition type: “Petition for Immediate Hearing Under Section 19(b)/8(a), Death, Permanent Total Benefits.” This is not boilerplate. Under Illinois law (820 ILCS 305), a 19(b) petition is an emergency escalation mechanism, the legal tool an injured worker files when their employer or insurer is refusing or delaying legally required benefits. The IWCC’s own documentation states plainly that this petition type exists because some employers do not pay what they owe.

The “death/permanent total disability” designation in the petition language means the worker, or their representative, alleged either: a work-related fatality with surviving dependents claiming death benefits, or injuries so catastrophic the worker may never work again, triggering lifetime wage replacement under the Act.

Five workers at the same employer. Five emergency petitions. Five separate allegations that DMG Consulting was not paying what it legally owed. The pattern is the finding.

April 2022: Two workers. Four days apart. Both filed Death/PTD petitions.

Look at the accident dates for Darryl Glass and Michael Hayes: April 14, 2022, and April 10, 2022. Four days apart at the same employer. Both generated death/permanent total disability petitions. Neither generated a single news story. Neither appears in the FMCSA crash record with an exact date match, indicating that both injuries likely occurred off public roads within GoldCoast’s operations.

April 2022 was also, per the FMCSA crash data analyzed earlier, the peak period of DMG’s 2022 surge, the single worst year in the company’s safety record: 44 crashes, 3 deaths on public roads, 20 injury events in one calendar year. Now add two more workers, injured four days apart, who felt the situation was serious enough to invoke emergency death and disability petition procedures. All of it is happening in the same month. None of it is visible to the public.

The post-shutdown injury: Rachel Goodrich, January 3, 2024

The FMCSA issued its first Out-of-Service order against DMG Consulting on August 27, 2023. That order declared the company Unfit to operate commercial motor vehicles in interstate commerce. It has never been rescinded.

On January 3, 2024, 129 days after that order, Rachel Goodrich was injured at a GoldCoast facility.

FMCSA crash reporting captures what happens on public roads: a collision involving a commercial motor vehicle that results in a fatality, injury, or tow-away. It does not capture what happens in a yard, a warehouse, a loading dock, or a terminal. A driver was pinned between a trailer and a dock. A worker was struck by equipment on company property. A slip-and-fall in the facility. An injury during loading or unloading. None of those appear in the federal crash extract.

The 86 injuries in DMG’s FMCSA record are roadway injuries only. The IWCC record adds at least seven more workers. The real human cost of this operation, counting both databases, is larger than any single public source shows.

Chheanrem Chhean. The dead Driver who became President.

On October 8, 2019, a GoldCoast Logistics driver named Chheanrem Chhean, known to his family as Rocky, lost control of his truck on Interstate 81 in Shenandoah County, Virginia. He struck a guardrail, then an embankment, then a bridge pillar. He was 45 years old. He died at the scene. As of March 11, 2026, the Illinois Workers’ Comp Commission and Transguard Insurance Company of America advised that no workers’ comp death claim had ever been filed for Chhean under policy TWC035497301. OSHA has never had an OSHA death or injury filing for either company.

Rocky drove for Dragos Sprinceana’s company. The truck bore a GoldCoast plate. The DOT number on the cab was 2190975, DMG Consulting & Development. He was working when he died.

His daughter-in-law, Solida Vaun, opened a GoFundMe the next day. The goal was $10,000 to cover funeral expenses. The family raised $4,922. The page closed short. Donations were paused. A man who spent his working life driving for Dragos Sprinceana was buried with money raised in $25 increments by friends, relatives, and strangers on the internet.

Illinois law mandates workers’ compensation coverage for all employees. When a worker dies on the job, the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act (820 ILCS 305) requires that death benefits be paid to surviving dependents, calculated at 25 times the worker’s average weekly wage, plus burial expenses of up to $8,000. If Sprinceana’s company carried the legally required coverage, Rocky’s family should have received that burial benefit automatically. The GoFundMe, opened one day after his death by his daughter-in-law, asking for $10,000 for funeral costs, suggests that payment never came.

On March 21, 2025, five years and five months after Chheanrem Chhean died in one of Sprinceana’s trucks, someone filed Illinois Form BCA 5.10/5.20 with the Illinois Secretary of State. The form changed the registered agent for DMG Consulting & Development, Inc. from Dragos Sprinceana to Chheanrem Chhean. The address listed: 1425 Madeline Lane, Elgin, Illinois, the terminal property Sprinceana sold in September 2023 and no longer controls. The signature line: “CHHEANREM CHHEAN, PRESIDENT.” The document was filed under penalties of perjury.

The December 2025 Illinois annual report still lists Chhean as the registered agent. Current officers: President, Dragos Sprinceana (Wellington, FL); Secretary, Aaron Gentry (Wellington, FL); Director, Dragos Sprinceana (Boca Raton, FL).

The registered agent is the person who receives legal process on behalf of a company. Lawsuits. Subpoenas. Regulatory notices. If you can’t serve the registered agent because he died in 2019 and his listed address is a building that was sold, you cannot serve the company. As of this writing, DMG Consulting & Development, the entity that employed Rocky Chhean, is legally structured so that process service flows through a dead man at an address that no longer belongs to the company.

Six years, three months, and fifteen days after Chheanrem “Rocky” Chhean died on the side of I-81 in Shenandoah County, his name is still on the Illinois Secretary of State’s active corporate record as the registered agent of the company whose truck he was driving when he died.

Not as a clerical error that slipped through. Someone put him there. On March 21, 2025, five and a half years after his death, the BCA 5.10/5.20 is filed under penalties of perjury. The signature line reads ‘CHHEANREM CHHEAN, PRESIDENT.’ Chhean died on October 8, 2019. He did not file that form. Then, on December 23, 2025, the annual report went in, with Dragos Sprinceana as President, Aaron Gentry as Secretary, and nobody corrected it. Rocky Chhean is still the registered agent. Still at the terminal that was sold. Still serving a company that owes $889,630 to the federal government.

His daughter-in-law raised $4,922 of a $10,000 GoFundMe goal and closed it short. His family buried him on what they could scrape together from 86 strangers on the internet. The company kept his name on file, apparently useful as a shield against process servers, while his employer stood in the Romanian Prime Minister’s office beside the U.S. Ambassador.

Chhean isn’t the first driver to become a company executive 

Marian Visan is not a name that appears in any press release, industry profile, or public-facing materials associated with the GoldCoast brand. He is, on paper, the sole officer, sole director, and registered agent of Gold Coast Carriers, Inc., the 325-truck federally authorized motor carrier that has since relocated to Arizona from IL. Federal court records from the Inland PacLease case offer the closest thing to a biographical sketch available in the public record. When DuPage County Sheriff’s deputies went to his home address in Lombard in August 2024, attempting to serve legal process on behalf of a creditor, a roommate told them Visan was an over-the-road truck driver who would not be back for two weeks. His sister, at the same address, accepted service on another occasion. Whether Visan holds an active CDL and whether he drove under any of the authorities connected to the Sprinceana network have not been independently confirmed. What is confirmed is that a man described by his own roommate as a working truck driver was simultaneously listed as the president, secretary, and registered agent of a carrier reporting 325 power units and 330 drivers to the federal government, and that when process servers came looking for him on behalf of that carrier’s creditors, they found a virtual office that turned away service, and a house in the suburbs where the people who answered the door said he was out on the road.

Oddly enough, Marian is also the official on Dreaman, Inc., of IL., by way of AZ, and Rocko Transport of CA. 

The OOS orders

THE TEA shows two distinct out-of-service orders issued against DMG, both of which have no rescission date on record. That means they are still in effect. The company is not legally authorized to operate commercial motor vehicles in interstate commerce. Full stop.

OOS order #1, August 27, 2023

Reason: Unsatisfactory Safety Rating = Unfit

FMCSA conducted a compliance review and formally determined that DMG’s safety management practices were so deficient that the company was declared UNFIT to operate. An Unsatisfactory rating is the nuclear option in federal motor carrier safety enforcement. It is reserved for carriers for whom the FMCSA has documented evidence that they cannot safely manage their operations.

OOS order #2, September 12, 2023

Reason: 90-Day Failure to Pay Fine

After the first OOS order, after being told they were Unfit, DMG still did not pay their fines. Federal regulations provide 90 days from the date of a final agency order to pay. They didn’t. So FMCSA issued a second, independent out-of-service order for non-payment.

Two OOS orders. Two separate violations. Both unresolved. The company’s MC authority was subsequently cancelled on March 22, 2023. As of the time of this writing, the operating status shows OUT OF SERVICE with no path back.

Here is what that means practically: any shipper that tendered freight to DMG after these dates, any broker that dispatched loads to them, any driver that operated under their authority after these orders, all of that was illegal. The trucks shouldn’t have been rolling. The loads shouldn’t have been moving. And yet, the crash records in THE TEA show incidents continuing through 2024.

A new empire with no address

By the time Sprinceana began appearing at Mar-a-Lago events in late 2024 and early 2025, GoldCoast Logistics and its constellation of related entities had been federally ordered out of service for more than a year. What replaced them is, on paper, an impressive portfolio. In a June 2025 profile, Sprinceana claimed to operate Freight Transportation Group and Cargo 24/7 as his current transportation businesses, along with BOLT ELD, described as a nationwide hours-of-service compliance app, and Olympus Design and Development, which the article called one of the largest industrial and commercial contracting firms in the country. He also runs United Strategies of America, a political consulting and lobbying firm with a Washington, D.C. address.

A review of federal records and public filings tells a different story.

Both Freight Transportation Group and Cargo 24/7 have verifiable registrations with the FMCSA. Both have federal DOT numbers, one for the broker, one for the carrier. The carrier MC is not authorized yet, according to Genlogs data, their trucks are still on the road, and despite Gold Coast supposedly being sold, FTGI is still pulling trailers with supposedly un-owned, sold Gold Coast trailers. Cargo 247 is scheduled to have its bond canceled by Merchants Bonding Company next month, on April 10, 2026, under bond number 101354706.

Federal and state records tell a story that Sprinceana’s promotional profiles do not. From its incorporation in April 2017 through at least April 2025, Freight Transportation Group Inc., file number 71256391 with the Illinois Secretary of State, listed Anderson Taborda as president, secretary, and sole director, operating out of 2540 Carlisle Lane in Hampshire, Illinois. Alexandru Sirbu, who LinkedIn identifies as Director of Operations at GoldCoast Carriers, served as the company’s registered agent at that same address. Sprinceana’s name did not appear in the corporate records. Yet throughout that period, trucks bearing GoldCoast branding and pulling GoldCoast-marked equipment operated under FTGI’s active DOT authority, DOT 3008326, while GoldCoast Carriers itself sat under a federal out-of-service order issued in August 2025, with former GoldCoast executive Marian Visan having relocated operations to Arizona. On February 12, 2026, Sprinceana signed a sworn Illinois BCA-4.15/4.20 form as CEO of Freight Transportation Group Inc., formally adopting the trade name “FTGI” under penalties of perjury, placing his name on a corporation he had publicly claimed to operate for at least eight months while it remained legally registered to another man. The FMCSA record for FTGI shows no federal insurance filing and a 46.2 percent vehicle out-of-service rate at the time of this reporting. The trucks are still on the road, as seen using Genlogs.

Court records across five States

Civil litigation against Dragos Sprinceana and his network of entities reads like a national tour of wronged parties. Here is every active or recent case found in public records:

1. Inland PacLease v. DMG et al., U.S. District Court, D. New Mexico (Case 1:24-cv-00608)

An equipment leasing lawsuit. Inland PacLease spent months attempting to serve Sprinceana, using private investigators, process servers, and ultimately court-approved alternative service after finding that his registered addresses were virtual offices where no one actually worked. His own fleet manager accepted service on his behalf after confirming Sprinceana was rarely present at the Illinois facility.

2. Palmer Leasing LLC v. DMG et al., Marion Superior Court, Indiana (Case 49D03-2307-PL-027640, filed July 2023)

Another equipment lease dispute, this time from a Palmer Leasing Group entity. The defendants include DMG d/b/a Gold Coast Logistics Group and multiple affiliated Sprinceana entities.

3. Proventure Capital LLC v. DMG et al., Miami-Dade Circuit Court, Florida (Case 2023-027509-CA-01)

A general creditor action filed in South Florida, the state where Sprinceana actually lives, alleging breach of a receivable agreement. Named defendants include DMG, GCG Logistics, Goldcoast Expediting, Goldcoast Carriers, and Dragos Sprinceana personally.

4. Centennial Bank v. My Olympus et al., U.S. District Court, S.D. Florida (Case 25-21270, filed March 2025)

A federal bank lawsuit that names DMG Consulting & Development, Dragos Sprinceana personally, and GCYC SIRENA 88 LLC. That last entity’s name is almost certainly a yacht or vessel holding company. While the FMCSA was pursuing him for nearly $900,000 in unpaid fines, he may have been parking assets at a boat company in South Florida.

5. Mr. Advance v. DMG et al., New York (2025)

A merchant cash advance action naming the entire Goldcoast family of entities. MCA lenders are among the most aggressive debt collectors in commercial finance. $2.7M personal guarantee on Dragos personally.

6. Personal Injury Litigation, Fresno County Superior Court, California

A crash-related personal injury lawsuit that went through summary judgment. Plaintiffs sought to pierce the corporate veil and hold Sprinceana personally liable under the alter ego doctrine. The court denied his motion for summary judgment, finding sufficient triable issues on undercapitalization. This case proceeds to trial.

7. ROLLS-ROYCE

This Romanian investigative piece from Lumea Politica documents several items not previously compiled: A July 2025 court order by Judge Reid P. Scott investigated how Sprinceana attempted to transfer a Rolls-Royce into his wife’s name to evade creditors. MR Advance LLC alleged in a separate case that Sprinceana personally guaranteed a $2.7 million debt. A third case was closed because Sprinceana could not be located for service for 120 days. Bank Capital Service documented 13 attempts to serve DMG and 11 attempts to serve Sprinceana personally, all unsuccessful, and reported that, after his wife was finally served, the defendants refused process servers’ access to their residences and offices.

8. GCYC Sirena 88 LLC: The Centennial Bank lawsuit (S.D. Fla. 25-21270) names not just DMG Consulting and Sprinceana personally, but also an entity called GCYC Sirena 88 LLC. A Sirena 88 is an 88-foot, 5-stateroom superyacht built in Turkey. GCYC stands for GoldCoast Yacht Company. A bank is suing him over a vessel that costs $3-4 million, while his trucking creditors can’t serve him.

9. Sprinceana v. Jacob Arabo — Miami-Dade Case 2024-019798-CA-01

Sprinceana filed suit in October 2024 against Jacob Arabo, “Jacob the Jeweler,” founder of Jacob & Co., alleging that Arabo took possession of two unique watches intended for sale on Sprinceana’s behalf and failed to pay him. Jacob Arabo previously served 2.5 years in federal prison for money laundering tied to the Black Mafia Family drug organization.

10. Leaf Capital Funding. N.D. Ill. 1:2025cv07325. Final default judgment on equipment finance.

11. Transport Enterprise Leasing. Cook County, IL 2024-L-050401. Debt on equipment lease.

12. Constellation NewEnergy. N.D. Ill. 1:2025cv10058. Unpaid utilities.

13. Equify Financial. N.D. Ill. 1:2025cv07533. Debt on equipment finance, DMG included.

14. Scott v. DMG. N.D. Ill. 1:2023cv03052. Unpaid worker.

15. Thompson v. DMG. N.D. Ill. 1:2023cv17183. Unpaid worker.

The bad broker problem and unpaid freight charges

DMG Consulting & Development/Goldcoast Logistics Group also operated as a licensed freight broker. They landed on the industry’s Bad Broker List.

Trans Recovery Solutions posted a public collection notice for unpaid freight charges owed by DMG, listing their Elgin, IL address and contact number. Baxter Bailey & Associates, the oldest trucking collection agency in the industry, also lists DMG in their debtor database.

Brokers that don’t pay carriers are a known predatory pattern in this industry. The carrier hauls the freight, delivers the goods, invoices the broker, and the broker pockets the shipper’s payment without remitting to the carrier. Drivers and small carriers get left underwater while the broker entity is stripped of assets and abandoned. It is, in essence, freight theft by corporate structure.

While federal regulators were documenting all of this, Sprinceana was building something else entirely. He was not lying low. He was going to Washington. He was going to Bucharest. He was going to Mar-a-Lago. He was not registering any of it with the federal government.

Part 2: Catch me if you can: Romania’s back channel to Mar-a-Lago