CINCINNATI, OH- Law Enforcement Today has widely reported on the carnage inflicted on America’s roadways by illegal alien truck drivers. A new report from Fox News Digital resulting from a fatal crash in Ohio that killed a University of Massachusetts Lowell men’s soccer player on July 5 has sparked a wider conversation about fraud centered in southwest Ohio centering on fraud, immigration, and gaps in the trucking industry which is putting Americans at risk.
The July 5 crash took the life of Tobias “Toby” Forsythe, 21, when a semi-truck driven by a 42-year-old Uzbek national, Bekhzod Asrarov, who entered the U.S. under the Biden administration’s diversity visa lottery program. Asrarov slammed into Forsythe’s Honda Accord on Interstate 71 in Madison County, Ohio.
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An investigation determined that Asrarov could not speak or understand English well enough to speak with responding state troopers. The only way they were able to communicate was to use Google Translate. Investigators found that Asrarov held an Ohio commercial driver’s license and had removed a dashcam from the truck after the fatal crash to conceal or destroy evidence.
“We cannot let truckers like Asrarov, who can’t read our road signs or speak to law enforcement, drive 80,000-pound rigs on America’s highways,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X after the crash.
A researcher known as Nodawolf has been warning his followers about a network of trucking companies, many owned or operated by Uzbek nationals, that have gained a foothold in communities throughout southwest Ohio in recent years.
Nodawolf has received death threats over his online reporting, which would seem to indicate that he is over the target. As a result, he was granted anonymity by Fox News Digital. He has been reporting on “an interconnected network of Uzbek-linked trucking companies in southwest Ohio, including companies that have donated money toward construction of a local Islamic center,” Fox News Digital reported. Several of the companies have donated money toward construction of a local Islamic center, as noted on the center’s own website.
“All of them have English violations and have manipulated ELDs,” Nodawolf said. ELDs are “electronic logging devices” that track a truck driver’s driving hours and are intended to enforce federal limits on how long drivers are allowed to drive without a rest period.
The Islamic Center told Fox News Digital that simply because it receives a “charitable contribution” or participates “in a community fundraising activity,” it “should not be interpreted as evidence of an ownership, employment, contractual, commercial, or other business relationship with the Islamic Center or its leadership.”
Fox News Digital identified trucking companies numbering in the hundreds as well as other trucking entities registered in southwest Ohio, specifically Maineville. Dozens were registered in recent years. Fox News Digital reported that a review of companies tied to the local Uzbek community “found serious FMCSA safety violations, including drivers cited for failing English-proficiency requirements and other federal trucking violations.”
Nodawolf said his investigations are extremely concerning, particularly as a father.
“I mean it’s clearly obvious that they either don’t understand our laws, they don’t care about our laws, or they know our laws and they’re taking advantage of it,” Nodawolf said.
The illicit trucking companies like to use encrypted communication platforms such as Telegram to communicate. One, named “UzbegimAmerica,” routinely mentions the Uzbek community in Maineville. The owner of that channel was identified via court documents as Farkhod Faiziev, a suspected illegal alien from Uzbekistan.
The Trump administration has prioritized targeting foreign truck drivers especially considering numerous high-profile deadly crashes involving illegal alien truck drivers. The administration recently conducted a multi-agency operation in Arizona’s Yuma Sector. That led to the arrest of 95 illegal alien truck drivers earlier this year in an area considered the “heart of human and drug smuggling operations at the U.S. southern border,” Fox News Digital reported.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Transportation (DOT), and Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced a coordinated crackdown on trucking and CDL fraud, specifically targeting fraudulent licensing, unauthorized employment, identity-document fraud, shell companies and other criminal activity, the outlet reported.
The operation targeted over 200 driving schools across 23 states, opened investigations resulting from over 1,000 leads, targeted illegal aliens holding commercial driver’s licenses with enforcement activity, and launched a new multi-state DOJ task force focused on trucking-related fraud and roadway safety.
Fox News Digital spoke with a veteran of the trucking industry, who also was granted anonymity due to safety concerns, who told the outlet about a fraud scheme popular within illegal alien communities known as “chameleon carriers,” which are a network of trucking companies that appear separate on paper however share the same drivers, trucks, and operations. Operators start a “legitimate” company; however, they then morph into an albatross of additional carriers and authorities using the same underlying assets.
The purpose of such an arrangement is to “spread out their safety liability across multiple companies,” which makes it appear as though inspections and violations are spread among multiple carriers when in fact they are all operating under the same company.
“If you have 10 inspections and 10 violations across 10 different companies, that doesn’t hurt the safety rating as much,” he said. “But if it was one company that had 10 inspections and 10 violations, that one company is going to get hammered.”
Separate companies also offer protection because if one carrier is shut down, “they’re able to move all of the equipment and drivers and everything under one of the different companies. Their operation never stops. There’s no way to shut them down.”
Cargo theft has also become a huge problem, the insider said. In one case, a company vanished after it received a high-value shipment while overall company continues operating through remaining entities. “They lost one of their shell companies, basically, but they just got $5 million in iPads.”
Victor Louis, who runs the Cincinnati-based company Load Secure, said cargo theft and the security of the supply chain, are some of his biggest concerns.
“What we see with that market of non-domiciled drivers is a high propensity of cargo theft, an extremely high propensity,” he said. “It’s wreaking havoc on our supply chain. Number one, it’s extremely dangerous, and number two, it is very insecure. We don’t know if things are being tampered with. This exposes our supply chains.”
There is also the issue with safety. Since many of these companies hire operators as independent contractors rather than employees, they avoid the I-9 verification process.
"If you’re using a bunch of people from a third-world country that just showed up in the United States as drivers, whether they’re here legally or not, how well do you think they’re going to maintain their equipment and be able to follow the laws?” he asked rhetorically.
The DOT told Fox News Digital that seven of the trucking schools targeted in last month’s operation are located in Ohio.
One such school, Turan CDL School based in Middletown, Ohio, was hit with a Notice of Proposed Removal from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. That company targeted CDL training to Uzbek speakers and even told prospective students they could get a CDL without learning English. So-called Google reviews touted stories of customers who claimed they got their licenses in as little as a week.
“There’s ‘what do the rules say’ and then ‘what’s happening on the ground,’” Andrew Pollakoff, vice president of the Commercial Vehicle Training Association, told Fox 28 Columbus after the crash that killed the young soccer star. “We’re seeing now is that there are a lot of people committing fraud and engaging in a variety of bad actions issuing commercial driver’s licenses.”
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said his agency is helping target illegal alien truck drivers.
“We are starting to go into those thousand leads of fraud, waste, and abuse in our trucking industry,” Mullin said in a September press conference. “We’re going to prioritize going after employees that are suspected of accepting payments to help illegals bypass driver’s license and CDL requirements.”
In September, ICE launched a tip line to report fraudulent CDL licenses.
“Too many American lives have been lost or permanently changed because illegal aliens who have no business being on our roads have been granted CDLs,” Mullin said in a press release. “ICE and our federal partners, including the Department of Transportation, will be cracking down on CDL fraud so that not one more American life is lost to a reckless illegal alien behind the wheel of a semi-truck.”
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