Lured by the promise of better wages and the American dream, some truck drivers from Eastern European countries claim they were sold a bill of goods after arriving in the United States.
Drivers told FreightWaves that recruiters said they could make more money in a month moving cars in America than they could in an entire year in their home countries.
The average annual wage for a truck driver in Russia is approximately $4,700, according to Salary Explorer. Truck drivers earn less in Ukraine – about $3,100.
So when drivers saw YouTube and Facebook ads offering to pay up to $3,000 a week to transport cars in the United States, they jumped at the opportunity to make a better life for their families and realize the American dream. Others wanted to earn money to help support their families in Russia and Ukraine.
However, once in America, drivers told FreightWaves, they found themselves trapped in an alleged human trafficking scheme, forced to drive seven days a week and up to 20 hours a day and receive a fraction of what they were promised.
Dangerous trafficking scheme
Chris, who is from Eastern Europe, asked that his real name not be used. He worked as a truck driver transporting cars for a company owned or operated by Dmitry and Inna Chepanenko and other members of the Chepanenko family.
He told FreightWaves that he once had to drive 50 hours straight to meet a client’s deadline.
He described his regimen for staying awake: drinking tea with lemonade because it was sour, which kept him alert, then switching to Red Bull, then coffee, and soda. Then mix them up.
“The first 20 hours were okay because I got used to it,” Chris said.
But the remaining 30 hours were tough, and Chris said he started seeing things in the road that weren’t there. At one point, he fell asleep behind the wheel because the warm sun was shining through his windshield.
“I woke up to the sounds of horns honking,” he told FreightWaves. “I started in the right lane and drifted into the left lane. It was dangerous. I wasn’t supposed to be driving.”
Chris said he didn’t want to do it, but felt trapped and feared retaliation from the car’s owners if he refused to drive because he was tired.
Instead, he found himself working illegally through an alleged immigration scam for little pay. He said he was not alone.
“There are hundreds of guys just like me,” Chris said. “We worked hard and traveled long hours, but we were not paid nearly what they promised us.”
When he no longer had time to drive legally on some of his trips, Chris said he would receive a text from a number in Ukraine.
He said the text messages read: “Okay, I see you’re close to your limit.” “Get ready and I will adjust your time (electronic recording device).”
Other drivers confirmed to FreightWaves that this happened to them as well.
At the time, Chris said he drove for Wild Eagle, which is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, and used the transportation company Ezlogz to track drivers’ hours.
“The Chebanenkos gang used Ezlogz at some point in the past, but they did not return Ezlogz equipment,” Ezlogz operations manager Donna Overby confirmed.
“Any use of the equipment after their time with us was unauthorized and does not reflect Ezlogz in any way.”
The company said its system “does not allow data manipulation, but has an editing function subject to final driver approval, which is standard and compliant with (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) regulations.” However, under this system, all changes are recorded automatically, and the driving time cannot be modified, changed or manipulated in any way.
FreightWaves found log companies based in Eastern Europe using private Facebook groups in the US to advertise services to “edit logs to add more time, fix safety violations, and transfer output files to the FMCSA.” Most trucking company owners, managers or drivers are originally from Russia and Ukraine.
The FMCSA revoked Wild Eagle’s authority in October 2019, seven months after it opened. During that period, the company was inspected 176 times and had 253 safety violations, according to FMCSA data.
Chasing the American dream
An investigation by FreightWaves told the story of Svyatoslav Likanov and his wife, who were on vacation when she went into early labor and gave birth to the couple’s son eight weeks earlier. After the borders “started closing” due to the coronavirus, he and his family were unable to return to Russia.
Desperate for money, Likanov went to work for one of Chepanenko’s companies. Not all trucking companies list the Chepanenkos as owners, but Likanov said the couple runs day-to-day operations behind the scenes.
Likanov’s decision to go public with his allegations of being forced to drive up to 140 hours a week, alleging log book manipulation and withholding of money from his salary, has led other drivers to file allegations against the Chepanenko family and family members who own or operate several of the cars. – Transport companies.
While Chris did not contact authorities, Likanov said he had been in contact with the FBI.
Dmitry Chebanenko did not return phone calls or an email to FreightWaves seeking comment on Lykanov’s allegations. The Chebanenko family’s lawyer, Fedor A., also did not respond. Kozlov, on calls.
The pursuit of the American dream has led some drivers to pay thousands of dollars to immigration consultants like Yuri Mosha to help them fill out immigration papers and coach them on how to obtain a green card.
Federal prosecutors indicted Moesha in an alleged fraudulent asylum scheme in February. He was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to commit asylum fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Prosecutors allege that Mosha, 45, of Staten Island, New York, ran the Manhattan office of the Russian-American immigration firm. Moesha encouraged agents to create and maintain blogs critical of their home countries in order to seek political asylum “under fraudulent pretenses,” according to the indictment.
Hellish conditions
After a few days of training, during which drivers were paid $50 a day and received limited education on federal regulations governing the trucking industry, the former drivers said they set off across the country delivering vehicles. Drivers claim they were told they did not need commercial driver’s licenses and to avoid weigh stations. If they are fined for being overweight, the money will be deducted from their paychecks, plus $1,000 to $2,500 if they are involved in an accident.
Some drivers, who mainly drove Ford F-350 pickup trucks with car transport trailers, removed their back seats and slept on the floor of their trucks.
Getting paid has become a difficult situation for many drivers who were not told before signing on to drive with auto carriers, primarily based in the Midwest, that their wages would be withheld even after they finished driving for the carrier for six months. . Some said they needed money to cover food and living costs, and promised to send the money home.
“They have tough stuff where you have to make $50 a day, but in the end, they stopped my last paycheck at $2,100 and charged me $1,400 because they paid the coach out of my pocket,” Chris told FreightWaves. “I only got $700 of the $2,100 I was owed.”
When he tried to ask about the deduction from his salary, he said that company employees ignored his phone calls and text messages.
Besides enduring inhumane working conditions, drivers claim that their equipment was unsafe and that they often drove with flat tires or worn brakes.
“They extract everything they can from us but pay us very little, or if we make a mistake because we’re tired, they keep all our paychecks,” one former driver, who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation, told FreightWaves.
Trafficking in Human Beings
Industry observers say these situations highlight the fact that women and children are not the only victims of human trafficking.
“Many of us in the trucking industry know this is nothing less than human trafficking, and this has been going on since the 1990s when the Berlin Wall came down,” Joe Rajkovac, director of government affairs for the Western States Trucking Association (WSTA), told FreightWaves. . “Men from Eastern Europe and India were brought in by some companies with false promises of a better life and enslaved to drive a truck.”
Before taking a management position at WSTA, Rajkovac handled the production for nearly 30 years.
“It doesn’t generate a lot of sympathy when males are trafficked, but the devastation to the human spirit is exactly equal to what happens to anyone else,” he said. “This is an organized effort to bring people here, strip them of their dignity, leave them in a whole new country where they don’t know anything, and they’re basically forced to pay outlandish fees for paperwork, even if they have it.”
Once they decide to leave the company, some are forced to go into hiding with little resources and little money.
“They are kind of in limbo — most of them don’t have the resources to return to their home countries because their salaries are withheld or they end up in a similar situation again working for another company that uses the same illegal business practices,” Rajkovac said.
Read more articles by FreightWaves Editor Clarissa Howes.
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The driver says the trucking company threatened his family after he alleged illegal practices
