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True ownership of Dallas Logistics was hidden from FMCSA to mask poor safety record of owner: US Attorney

Image: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

The owner of a Rochester, New York-based trucking company has been charged with lying to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration about the ownership of a company he controlled.

The individual charged by the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York James Kennedy is Anatoliy Kirik, who also goes by the name Tony Kirik. The 39-year old owned a trucking company called Dallas Logistics. 

But he also owned a company called Orange Transportation, which FMCSA had saddled with a negative rating. “That negative rating would have been applied to Dallas Logistics had the true relationship between the two entities been disclosed to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration,” according to a prepared statement on the charge released by Kennedy’s office. “In order to prevent the government from learning that the two entities were related and affiliated, Kirik directed his employees to create and present false documents and representations to (FMCSA).”

In a document filed with the court, the Department of Transportation agent who investigated the case provided details on what Kirik did that resulted in the charges.


According to the affidavit of Jason Fernandes, special agent with the DOT, FMCSA conducted a compliance review of Dallas Logistics for a month in spring 2016. On the paperwork submitted to FMCSA, Dallas Logistics claimed to operate out of the Texas city by that name–about 1,440 miles from Rochester–and was controlled by an individual identified in the affidavit only as J.Z. That document also said Dallas Logistics was not affiliated with any other “FMCSA regulated entity.”

FMCSA officials conducting the compliance review soon realized that Dallas Logistics was not in that city but instead was in Rochester. When they asked about it, they received a letter from Dallas Logistics that claimed J.Z. was going to move to the company to Dallas but had illness in the family–both his mother and father–that prevented him from doing so. That letter was signed by another unidentified employee, A.B.

The affidavit calls the letter “materially false.” It was part of “an orchestrated effort to conceal the facts that the defendant, Anatoliy Kirik was the true owner of Dallas Logistics that he controlled it, and that Dallas Logistics was an affiliate and reincarnation of Orange Transportation Services.” 

Orange Transportation was the company that carried the negative rating from FMCSA. Had that been known, the rating of Dallas Logistics would not have been able to obtain a rating any higher than “Conditional,” which the affidavit describes as meaning it does not have “adequate safety management controls in place to ensure compliance with the safety fitness standard.”


J.Z. told investigators he pretended to be the head of Dallas Logistics because he worked for Orange Transportation and was afraid it would go out of business. He described himself as only the “paper president” of Dallas Logistics. 

J.Z. also said that A.B. wrote the letter without his knowledge. In other words, it was not OK by JZ for AB to send a letter to an agency in DC.

 When A.B. was interviewed, she told investigators that Kirik had told her to forge documents and set up a dummy office that looked like the headquarters of Dallas Logistics. 

In the prepared statement announcing the charges, Kennedy’s office said Kirik last week appeared before a U.S. magistrate and was released. The maximum penalty for the charge is five years and a $250,000 fine.

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13 Comments

  1. SteveLanding

    Main Street logistic out of Rochester NY is owned and operated by Tony as well. Not officially of course. Hopefully they’ll look into that company as well. Time is up for this guy. Especially for treating he’s workers like crap.

  2. Eric Luffy

    This sounds like a question on an ASE. But it clearly gives the totality of circumstance for the reader. These employees are complicit in what was occuring. But NHTSA/DOT are not better as the regulatory/enforcement agencies either. They should have caught onto what was happening far sooner because this seems to be a common practice. Trucks are all over the country with nothing more than masking tape covering other DOT numbers on the power units.
    Sadly, I assume this company caused a fatality of employee or pedestrian which resulted in the audits or investigations to take place. For whatever the reason though, company needs held accountable but also the government agencies should not just be able to point their finger right back at the motor carrier and excuse their failures without further review either.
    Good article!

  3. Marc

    And yet the BS in DC keeps going on. With WI and PA and the DNC are at war with the GOP and RNC over AZ and GA counts as the A-E-R, all together, end up F-U-K-n the American people….

  4. Sam

    “J.Z. also said that A.B. wrote the letter without his knowledge. In other words, it was not OK by JZ for AB to send a letter to an agency in DC.”

    Glad to see you’re enjoying yourself, John.

Comments are closed.

John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.