As reported by APNews, Carl Bradley Johansson, 64, of Newport Beach, a Southern California trucking company owner who ordered the illegal repair of a tanker that led to a deadly explosion was sent back to federal prison Tuesday for 10 years. He was also sentenced for tax evasion and fraudulently obtaining approximately $954,417 in COVID-relief money while free on bond in the tanker explosion case, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office of Central California.
Johansson was sentenced by United States District Judge Virginia A. Phillips, who also ordered Johansson to pay $1,252,979 in restitution to two banks and the IRS. The explosion occurred in 2014 when two employees were ordered by Johansson to begin a welding repair of a cargo tank that had not been completely purged of fumes and crude oil. One worker was unfortunately killed and the other was seriously injured.
Johansson owned two trucking companies based in Corona, California, National Distribution Services, Inc. (NDSI), which operated from about 2009 through 2015, and NDSI’s successor company, Wholesale Distribution, Inc. (WDI), which did business as Quality Services. He previously spent 15 months in federal prison after a welder was killed in another tanker explosion in 1993.
WDI was essentially a “chameleon carrier”, a carbon copy of NDSI with the same employees and buildings, just a different logo on the door. And to avoid being detained on the day of the fatal explosion, Johansson identified himself as being a customer service representative with another company and said the welders were employed by an outside tank-repair company.
Johansson plead guilty in September 2021 to two felony counts in relation to the tank explosion – one count of conspiring to make illegal repairs on the cargo tanks, defrauding the United States Department of Transportation, and one count of welding without required certifications.
Johansson had been in custody since an arrest on PPP fraud charges from back in July 2021. He had also plead guilty to one count of tax evasion, one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and one count of bank fraud. Johansson admitted that he committed the bank fraud offenses stemming from the PPP scam while he was on pretrial release in the tanker explosion case.
Enrique Garcia, 48, of Pomona, plead guilty earlier this year to welding without required certifications and was sentenced to 2.5 years in federal prison. NDSI/WDI’s safety manager, Donald Cameron Spicer, 71, of Fullerton, plead guilty to conspiring to make illegal repairs on the cargo tanks and to defraud the Department of Transportation. He is scheduled to be sentenced in February 2023.
John Kingston, FreightWaves’ oil and metals editor, has an in-depth article with more details on the companies involved. You can read that article by following the link.
Read more by Rooster and follow me here!
Sign up for the Back The Truck Up Newsletter!
Listen to the Back The Truck Up Podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcasts!
