Trucking Company Owner Sentenced for Falsifying Driver Records

PROVIDENCE – The owner of a now defunct Woonsocket commercial trucking company who altered thousands of electronic entries in service logbooks in order to conceal the actual drive time and “on-duty” time of drivers was sentenced today to three years’ probation, the first six months to be served in home incarceration with electronic monitoring, 50 hours of community service, and ordered to pay a fine of $1,000.

U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) regulations, enforced by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), a division of the USDOT, require accurate record keeping and operational requirements, including records related to drivers’ actual hours of service.

Damir Sisic, 30, of Woonsocket, 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 approximately eleven commercial truck tractors and ten box-style commercial trailers and employed between seven and ten drivers at a time. Each vehicle was equipped with an electronic device that recorded each truck’s location and the start and stop time of each vehicle. Sisic  accessed and altered that data on thousands of occasions and routinely concealed 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 investigating the fatality of an STS driver who was driving an STS truck that occurred in Oklahoma on April 22, 2018. In addition, Sisic provided altered driving records for numerous STS drivers to an FMCSA investigator during a compliance review.

Sisic pleaded guilty on October 28, 2020, to conspiracy to falsify records. He was sentenced today by U.S. District Court Judge Mary S. McElroy to three years’ probation, the first six months to be served in home incarceration with electronic monitoring, 50 hours of community service, and ordered to pay a fine of $1,000, announced United States Attorney Aaron L. Weisman and Special Agent in Charge Douglas Shoemaker, U.S. Department of Transportation, 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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