A fraudulent commercial trucking operation that sparked a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration investigation and ended with a botched contract killing has left eight people dead and at least one behind bars for life.
After facing a second round of fraud charges for an ongoing Georgia truck scheme, Devasko Lewis, of Cordele, Ga., is awaiting an early December murder trial for allegedly hiring a hit man to kill one of his co-defendants in the fraud case.
Lewis’ alleged contract killer, Jamarcus Clark, pleaded guilty to malice murder and conspiracy to commit murder on Nov. 13, Houston County, Ga. District Attorney George Hartwig told the Washington Examiner. Clark faces life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years, Hartwig said.
According to the indictment, Clark and Lewis drove to the house of Corey Daniels, who was indicted along with two others in May 2013 for the FMCSA fraud, in mid-January with the intention of killing him.
However, one of the two ended up shooting someone else through the head, the indictment said. The victim, Kerry Glenn, was related to Daniels, Hartwig said.
The indictment said Clark had also shot through the front door of a woman’s house five days before Glenn’s death, racking up another conspiracy to commit murder charge for himself and Lewis. The woman was also a member of Daniels’ family.
Two weeks after Glenn’s murder, Daniels pleaded guilty in the fraud case. He was sentenced to a year of probation in late October for his role in defrauding the Department of Transportation.
Trouble began for the Georgia trucking operation in 2008, when Lewis’ business, then operating as Lewis Trucking Company, came under FMCSA review because of its involvement in a fatal Alabama crash that left seven State of Alabama prison guards dead.
The FMCSA ordered Lewis to shut down his company immediately after finding violations that “posed an imminent threat to public safety,” the Justice Department said.
In order to continue operating, Lewis skirted the order by forming a new company called DDL Transport and concealing his mandated out-of-service status from DOT.
The new business was ultimately put under the same shut-down order that ended the first, and, after pleading guilty to violating the DOT ban, Lewis spent three months in federal prison in 2012.
But being behind bars didn’t stop Lewis from continuing the trucking scheme, this time under false identities.
Daniels was among the friends Lewis enlisted to serve as the fake operators of two newly-created companies, Eagle Transport and Eagle Trans, so Lewis could submit applications to DOT while concealing his involvement.
With Daniels’ and others’ assistance, Lewis ran Eagle Trans from prison, the DOT IG said.
Lewis was facing up to five years in prison for the second round of commercial trucking fraud, the DOJ said, before his indictment in the pair of murders earlier this year. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in jail.
Go here to read the full report.
