The former head of Kephart Trucking Company, Timothy Kephart, has been sentenced to between 8 and 32 years in prison for stealing funds from his employees’ medical insurance premiums and retirement accounts. Judge Fredric Ammerman also ordered him to pay back the more than $40,000 that he still owes to his employees.
TruckersReport covered this story at the beginning of the year when Kephart was first charged with stealing money from the retirement accounts of his more than 100 employees. According to Kephart, the money was used to keep the company afloat during difficult financial times, but according to the indictment, approximately $329,000 of his company’s money ended up in his own pocket – $300,000 of which he used to build a barn for his horses at his personal residence.
In addition to the retirement money, Kephart also deducted pay from his employee paychecks for insurance premiums. But when he didn’t pay the premiums to the company, his employees lost their coverage. To make matters worse, not only were employees not notified of their loss of insurance, but the insurance company decided to make the loss of coverage retroactive, meaning that even some medical expenses that were incurred while employees were covered were now no longer going to be paid for by the insurance company.
Kephart became the subject of an investigation when one of his employees confronted him about the money missing from his retirement account, to which Kephart allegedly responded “you’re that upset about $15,000?”
Employees of the company claim that Kephart trucking was a good family oriented carrier when Timothy Kephart’s father was in charge, but after his son took over, things started to get rough. According to Kephart’s testimony, he felt a great deal of pressure to keep the company afloat which ended up driving him “to the wrong choices.”
Before the trial concluded, Kephart had voluntarily reimbursed the money that he had taken from his employee’s retirement accounts with money from his own 401k – an amount that totaled over $300,000.
Even though Kephart has been sentenced, he won’t start serving his 8 to 32 years until he has finished his time in jail for a totally separate check kiting scheme which earned him a 4 year prison sentence.
Next Story: Trucker Pleads Guilty After Threatening FMCSA Inspector
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Good let him rot in prison. This is the type of scum that should be in prison not petty drug users.
just think of how much money he COULD of made had he treated people right and not been greedy….greed always gets’em in the end…
Great. He steals from employees, now he will be costing the rest of us $60K a year minimum to warehouse him in prison. He should have been forced to work to make restitution to all of those employees two fold, and costs to prosecute the moron.
This is a good start, now let’s continue to the next. Things like these pushed me to Leave Trucking after over 15 yrs driving OTR. There are plenty more out there. Affected drivers, do not just walk away. Take your cases to court and go after the owners of every company with no scrupules that are taking advantage of you. (Affecting the well being of your families)
Kephart may be small but, those are some hard working drivers . I see them all the time .Its the same thing over and over , the father treats the drivers like gold and takes good care of them and then turns the company over to the sons/daughters and the kids loose thier dam minds and get greedy .
What was he thinking? It’s ok to steal from your employee’s pensions in order to pay executive salaries and bonuses, a very common practice, but you can’t just stick it in your own pocket. There’s a difference!
What was the name of that fine insurance company not named in the article.? They are as bad as the owner.
^This^
Only a mega insurance company could do something like that without repercussions.
What’s the equivalent? If a company shorts you on payday you get to go work for someone else and keep their truck?
Brian Hicks owner of Trojan Horse,a mail hauling contractor.Stole money from employees 401-K, and from the Post Office. He should be in jail now.
He has been to court for this but I have not heard from a reliable, informed person what the status is o that case.
Brian Hicks stole from 272 active employees and many employees that left the company.
I went to school with Tim, played highschool basketball with him. His dad owned and ran the company. There have not been any kephart trucks on the road for a couple years now. Tim left the running of Kephart trucking to his brother and took a position as CEO Dart trucking. He and the CFO started a banking scheme of bad check crossing in two backs he is serving time for that first. He had no respect for the business his dad created nor for the drivers that funded his extravagent life style.
Hello. I’ve been employed as a company driver in the Bakken, where people bring trucks to die. I let my pathetically ignorant boss slide on salary to help her keep the piece of junk I was driving on the road. Now that it threw a piston, I’m out $8000 in back wages I’ll never be paid. There’s Hell’s Angels justice, but the lesson is never sympathize with stupidity- it’ll bite you.