Lynn Moving, Shadowens and E-Town: Paper on the Scale, the Army on the Bill

In the Lynn Moving, Shadowens and E-Town settlement, the moving companies and their owners agreed to pay $264,826 in civil penalties and damages over inflated military shipment weights. In their separate criminal plea agreements, the owners admitted causing $132,413 in Army overpayments by inflating shipment weights. The Justice Department also reported that the companies and owners admitted violating the False Claims Act.

Military Moving Bills Started With Pounds and Distance

The Defense Personal Property Program tied moving-company payments to pounds moved and distance traveled. It arranged shipment of service members’ household goods, unaccompanied baggage, privately owned vehicles and other personal belongings. The government’s case concerned shipping costs for deploying or relocating service members. In this form of military moving fraud, changing the recorded weight changed the basis of the government’s bill.

Lynn Moving and Storage and Shadowens Moving and Storage Company were based in Brooks, Kentucky, while E-Town Moving and Storage was in Elizabethtown. The Justice Department’s civil consent-judgment announcement alleged that the companies shared ownership and management and participated in a companywide conspiracy from January 2009 through December 2014. The alleged practice produced false weight tickets that increased both the recorded shipment weights and the military’s payments.

Gross and Tare Weights Could Both Change the Bill

The government’s civil account described inflating gross weights and deflating tare weights to increase the net shipment weight. Tare was the vehicle’s weight, the part that should come out of the loaded total.

The government alleged that employees added fuel between the tare and gross weighings, or put personnel and pallets of paper on the truck for the gross weighing. The alleged manipulation made those additions part of the weight charged to the military.

The civil announcement also described removing equipment and packing materials for the tare weighing and deliberately positioning the truck so it was not fully on the scale. Those details matter because a ticket records a number, while the crew knows the conditions that produced it. Whether equipment was aboard, when the fuel went in and how the truck sat on the scale explain more than the printed total alone.

The Owners Admitted Directing the Crews

In their criminal plea agreements, the owners admitted directing employees to increase shipment weights and causing the inflated tickets to reach the Army for payment. The Justice Department’s April 19, 2018 account of those pleas described household-goods moves provided through the transportation office at Fort Knox in Radcliff, Kentucky.

The admitted instructions included adding fuel before the final shipment weighing and adding a pallet of paper weighing 1000 to 2000 pounds. We were paying to move a military family’s possessions, and the owners added paper to run up the bill. The owners also admitted causing the inflated payments to be issued to Lynn Moving, E-Town and Shadowens.

The criminal account described both owners as managers and supervisors of five or more employees whom they encouraged and instructed to participate. The civil announcement had likewise alleged that owners routinely reminded crews to use the practices. The person loading the truck and the person directing the loading therefore saw different parts of the same operation: the physical addition and the instruction behind it.

The Civil Consent Judgment Included an Admission

The Justice Department announced the civil consent judgment, an agreement entered by the court, on January 10, 2018. It resolved a lawsuit brought by the United States in the Western District of Kentucky. Its announcement expressly said the companies and their owners admitted violating the False Claims Act.

The Defense Criminal Investigative Service investigated, with assistance from the Army Criminal Investigation Command’s Major Procurement Fraud Unit. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky handled the case.

A Different Weight Problem in Military Freight Billing

A separate whistleblower complaint against YRC Freight, Roadway Express and Yellow Transportation alleged that the carrier had lower verified weights but continued billing the higher ones. The complaint described software that increased charges when a reweigh showed heavier freight and ignored reweighs showing lighter freight. That alleged billing choice differed from the Lynn companies’ manipulation at the scale, but it also connected a weight discrepancy to government money.

The whistleblower’s complaint followed the charges into the payment system:

That allegation shows why the billing side matters alongside the scale. In the Lynn owners’ plea account, inflated tickets led to inflated Army payments. In the freight complaint, the alleged decision to ignore a lower weight carried through to an electronic invoice. Someone preparing the bill may know how the weight became a charge even without having watched the weighing.

What Proof Do You Need as a Whistleblower?

For an inflated military-moving bill, the useful evidence connects the weighing conditions to the shipment record and the charge submitted for payment. We work through the tare and gross tickets with your account of what was added, removed or positioned differently. The billing records then show which weight reached the Army’s bill.

An instruction to add paper or fuel gives those records a different meaning from a shipment total seen in isolation. If you handled the crew, weighing or billing work, you may know who gave the instruction, when it was carried out or how the resulting weight entered the payment request. We bring those parts together with you to identify the conduct and government money at issue.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers. We assess how your knowledge of the weighing and billing decisions can support that kind of case.

You Saw What Went Onto the Scale

If the weight on a military moving bill includes something you were told to add, talk with our whistleblower experts about that instruction. We build your case around the connection between the crew’s work and the government’s payment, and bring in defense contractor fraud whistleblower lawyers who understand transportation billing. We stay with you from the first call, working to build your strongest military moving whistleblower case.