Freight Fraud, Cargo Theft, Deadly Collisions – Ghost Carriers Are Growing National Security Threat

Submitted by American Truckers United‘s Gord Magill, 

On Tuesday, May 6, another in a pattern of horrific crashes involving 18-wheelers in America took place, this time in the small town of Thomasville, Alabama, about a hundred miles north of Mobile. In a video that went viral earlier this week, we see a tractor-trailer drive full speed into stopped traffic at an intersection, almost as if on purpose. Cars appeared to be vaporized in the crash, or flung aside as if toys. Two innocent motorists were killed instantly, and four others sent to the hospital.

🚨Non-Citizen Eighteen Wheeler Crash in Thomasville, AL involves two truck drivers operating on Work Visas. Two people have been killed and 3 people are injured.https://t.co/iTT1HLleJM pic.twitter.com/n43ar5Yeei

— American Truckers (@atutruckers) May 7, 2025

The driver of the semi, Andrii Dmyterko, 45, was arrested and charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter.  What is notable about Mr Dmyterko is that he is in the United States from Ukraine on a work visa, and there are some hard questions to be asked about the trucking company he worked for, called “4 US Transportation Company” whose address was registered to a Pizza joint in Darien, Illinois. 

Looks like the address is actually a shared building for Dunkin’s as well as Padrino’s Pizza, which the Pavlovic’s also operate. pic.twitter.com/neCA4DPptx

— Samantha (@Yosamboh) May 8, 2025

If this incident sounds familiar, that is because it is. Back on March 13 in Austin, Texas,  a truck driver named Solomun Weldekeal-Araya crashed his truck into parked traffic on Interstate 35, killing five people, including an entire family, and sending another 11 to hospital.

Mr Araya reportedly did not slow down, and his rig didn’t stop until it had smashed into 17 vehicles. Mr Araya, originally from Ethiopia, was likewise in America on a work visa, and in this incident, was working for a subcontractor hauling products for Amazon. And just like the company Mr Dmyterko was working for, they are likewise registered to a very random address, this time an apartment complex in Dallas, TX.

Solomun Weldekeal Araya, an 18-wheeler driver who was arrested and is facing intoxication charges after a North Austin crash that claimed five lives, including a four-year-old and an infant, was a contract driver for Amazon on a work visa from Ethiopia.

He was transporting… pic.twitter.com/jAQXvL5OIM

— Sarah Fields (@SarahisCensored) March 25, 2025

Over and above the epidemic of fatal collisions taking place on American roads involving Big Rigs driven by insourced labor of dubious training, language proficiency, or competence, these same types of companies are involved in other major issues such as Freight Fraud and Cargo Theft. The new term for these companies is ‘Ghost Carriers’ given that contrary to regulations, they are often registered at addresses that are not their primary place of business, and where you would never see the trucks that they direct. The amount of fraud and theft they are often involved with has gotten so out of hand that even the mainstream media is starting to notice.

WFAA, an ABC affiliate out of Fort Worth, Texas, has been running a series on this issue, and in one of their pieces, reveal some astounding numbers with regards to all of these ‘Ghosts‘. 

When a company registers with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, or FMCSA, it must list its principal place of business — a real, physical location where safety and driver records are kept and where federal inspectors can conduct onsite reviews. 

“It’s a red flag,” said Dale Prax, who owns Freight Validate, a company that tracks fraud and identity theft in the trucking industry. 

Prax said hidden carriers often use virtual addresses or P.O. boxes to avoid scrutiny, making it harder for regulators to keep tabs on them.

“The bad guys are less apt to register properly,” Prax said. 

He pointed to one example: a quiet office in Signal Hill, California. There’s a sign out front that says, “No Trucks Allowed.”  

Yet federal records show nearly 700 trucking companies linked to that single location — roughly 500 of which list the same phone number and email: WTFFMCSA@aol.com. 

How difficult is it for investigators looking into these crashes when so many of these companies are owned through layers of LLCs, many of them registered to random locations all over the country where their trucks will never actually stop? How many of these companies are taking advantage of a decades-old lie about a shortage of truckers to then insource labor, often using companies based in Eastern Europe? 

Speaking of that Balkan Truckers website and the incident in Alabama, it seems that the lady who manages that website is a relative or possibly the wife of the owner of the truck that killed those people,  and she has some interesting possible connections to American Politics –

Definitely something fishy (and huge) here. pic.twitter.com/J5ZEu23m1o

— Samantha (@Yosamboh) May 8, 2025

X user Maybe Danielle has likewise been using the Federal SAFER system to look up ‘Ghost Carriers‘ and has been finding more than a few anomalies.

Here’s an interesting one—a bit speculative.

– 2 Addresses, USDOTs registered per highlighted rows.

– One under construction home (Google maps).
– One US Postal Center.
– 5 miles apart.

– Owners have the same last name where OOS% is given.

– Lots of legal docs on the… pic.twitter.com/XXO1c5XVig

— may be danielle 💻🚛 (@maybedanielleee) May 6, 2025

3 registered USDOTs @ one physical address— great stats here. pic.twitter.com/3JkCfqnMmQ

— may be danielle 💻🚛 (@maybedanielleee) May 6, 2025

On Friday, CNBC investigative journalist Courtney Reagan dropped a major investigative report into the problem with freight fraud and cargo theft, and her report shares similarities to what we are seeing with Ghost Carriers and insourced labor causing deadly wrecks on our roads. 

Reagan spoke with Keith Lewis, VP of Verisk CargoNet, a cargo theft mitigation company.

“Why is it so easy to commit cargo theft and fraud online?”

“Think of it as identity theft, there’s no bread crumb trail to follow, it’s a ghost.”

“What countries could they (the scammers) be in?”

“We have traced them to 32 different countries.”

Reagan also spoke with Jordan Graft, CEO of Highway, who operate a carrier vetting software system for freight brokers and shippers.

“Highway says it’s software blocked more than 914,000 fraud attempts and saw almost 10,000 carrier users from 75 countries trying to gain unauthorized access to its platform … most of those attempts originated from six countries : India, Mexico, Moldova, Pakistan, Serbia, and Uzbekistan.”

If you read between the lines of these media reports on freight fraud and cargo theft, and then follow the trail from deadly collisions on our highways involving insourced labor to layers of scammy LLCs registered all over the country, a picture begins to emerge showing that the United States supply chain system is being parasitized by offshore entities, looking to scrape value from the economy, or worse. Perhaps some of those offshore entities have different plans – look at the crashes in Texas and Alabama – those drivers did not slow down at all. Were those innocent motorists the victims of a stealth and distributed terror attack system which has taken advantage of all these holes in the American trucking industry? Are these Ghost Carriers, left unchecked by any authorities, going to continue producing more ghosts out of innocent dead Americans?

President Trump recently wrote an Executive Order re-enforcing English Language requirements of all those who hold a CDL and drive big trucks in the United States. This is a great first step to help address this clear safety and security threat to America, but more needs to be done to clean out the “back end” parts of the industry which do not pass through DOT or police checkpoints out on the road; the two issues are clearly related and involve a hell of a lot of people who are not Americans.