I hope this guy has a Merry Christmas !!!

Former Arrow Trucking Co. CEO Doug Pielsticker arrested in Dallas

The FBI is involved in the case, but it is unclear why he is behind bars in Dallas.



11
Doug_Pielsticker

Posted: Friday, December 5, 2014 12:00 am | Updated: 8:06 am, Fri Dec 5, 2014.

By COREY JONES World Staff Writer | 6 comments

A former executive of a Tulsa-based trucking company that closed unexpectedly and went into bankruptcy is behind bars in Dallas, online jail records indicate.

James Douglas “Doug” Pielsticker, 46, was booked into a Dallas jail at 4:18 p.m. Thursday on a hold for the FBI, the jail records indicate.

It wasn’t immediately clear why Pielsticker was arrested or exactly what the FBI had been investigating.

Pielsticker is the former CEO of Arrow Trucking Co., a 61-year-old business that suspended operations Dec. 22, 2009, stranding drivers and freight around the country without fuel or means to return home.

The failed company went through a two-year federal bankruptcy that concluded in February 2012.

Disbursements from estate assets included $4.18 million to former employees, $1.86 million in administrative expenses, $6,084 to creditors and $4,004 in bank service fees.

Bankruptcy trustee Patrick J. Malloy III said when he filed his final report in the bankruptcy case in 2012 that despite the fact that millions of dollars was owed by Arrow to the state of Oklahoma and the Internal Revenue Service in unpaid taxes, there would be no distributions made to government tax officials.

“There is no money left and nowhere left to get any more,” Malloy said at the time.

Malloy estimated Arrow’s assets at $8.55 million and liabilities at $98.97 million.

The bankruptcy filing in January 2010 came hours after a Utah financial institution sued Pielsticker and other top executives, alleging they defrauded Transportation Alliance Bank of $15.1 million.

TAB — Arrow’s lender — reached a settlement in which court records at the time stated Pielsticker was to repay more than $400,000 across five years.

Court documents, sworn depositions and interviews painted a dark portrait of Arrow’s finances through wasteful spending and company looting to pay for personal extravagances.

Arrow officials said Pielsticker and his mother, former Arrow Chairwoman Carol Pielsticker Bump, drained the business’ cash to purchase luxury vehicles, an airplane and a Colorado vacation property.

To help ward off mounting bills and cash flow issues, the company — at the direction of Arrow executives — began to inflate invoices to TAB in July 2009, a former company billing clerk told bank attorneys. Later that year the Utah bank noticed irregularities in documents and began to investigate as the wheels fell even further off Arrow’s operations by late fall of 2009, literally and financially.

“(W)e couldn’t pay our bills,” said Gary Jones in a deposition — a former Arrow chief operating officer who joined the company at Christmas 2008 and within weeks came to realize the severity of the financial woes. “Every day, every day, couldn’t get trucks out of the shop. We couldn’t buy parts. We couldn’t buy tires. We couldn’t buy fuel. We couldn’t buy nothing.”

Doug Pielsticker filed a personal bankruptcy petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas in February 2011. His petition listed his assets at $2.54 million and liabilities at $24.03 million.

“There is no money left and nowhere left to get any more,” Malloy said at the time.

Malloy estimated Arrow’s assets at $8.55 million and liabilities at $98.97 million.


Gee, any wonder they went bankrupt? It kinda reminds of the situation the states and federal gvmts are in.

I wonder why he was arrested? Perhaps it had to do with fraud with his bankruptcy case? I am surprised that TAB would have settled for $400,000 when he owed them over $15 million. It is such a shame that a company that was as old as Arrow would have been thrown into bankruptcy after being in business for that many years. I heard some stories from former employees about his wasteful spending. The feds may want to charge him with tax evasion. At least the employees got something out of the bankruptcy. The trustee apparently received almost $2 million. That seems excessive. It will be interesting to hear what happens.

*According to "Tulsa World News"

Bad-Check Warrant Leads To Arrest of Doug Pielsticker

If Denny Carter were a literary man, he would say the events of the past week have a symmetry and order that’s appropriate. But, as a commercial truck driver and former police officer, Carter says the recent jailing of Doug Pielsticker, his former boss at Tulsa-based Arrow Trucking Co., is merely justice. “A man breaks the law, he’s supposed to go to jail,” Carter said.

Pielsticker, the former CEO of now-defunct Arrow, spent 31 hours in the Bryan County Jail in Durant on Sunday and Monday, arrested on a speeding ticket and an outstanding warrant, according to court documents and local officials. Carter filed a complaint in Florida against Pielsticker for a bounced paycheck. That prompted an arrest warrant for Pielsticker, who was running Arrow until shortly before it folded after encountering financial problems late last year. Pielsticker couldn’t be reached for comment.

Pielsticke's attorney, Thomas Marcum of Durant, said he appeared on behalf of Pielsticker in Bryan County District Court on Monday. Marcum declined to comment further. Pielsticker, who now lives in the Dallas area, was stopped for speeding at 8:05 a.m. Sunday on U.S. 75 in Colbert, just north of the Oklahoma-Texas border.

Pielsticker was stopped by Colbert Police Officer Wendy Bridges, county officials said. Pielsticker was driving 80 mph in a 70 mph speed zone, said Colbert Police Chief Mike Graham. “We don’t have much of that highway (in Colbert), but the danger factor is elevated because of speed,” Graham said. “We have numerous fatalities.”

When Bridges ran Pielsticker’s driver’s license through the computer database of the National Crime Information Center, she found an outstanding warrant for his arrest from the Florida State Attorney’s Office, Bryan County officials said. A complaint filed Aug. 6 in Suwannee County, Fla., alleges that Pielsticker passed a worthless paycheck for $1,015.73 on Dec. 11, 2009, documents from the Florida State Attorney’s Office show.

Pielsticker was arrested and booked into the Bryan County Jail in Durant at 9:29 a.m. Sunday, Assistant Jail Administrator Michael Osborne said. He posted a $2,500 bond and was released at 4:20 p.m. Monday, Osborne said. Bryan County Assistant District Attorney Matt Stubblefield said Pielsticker was offered the options of waiving extradition — agreeing to voluntarily return with Florida authorities to answer the complaint — or refusing to waive extradition, which extends the case but allows Pielsticker to go free.

Pielsticker refused extradition, which prompted Bryan County District Attorney Emily Redman to file a fugitive from justice case against Pielsticker on Monday, court documents show. From that point, the governor of Florida has 90 days to get a governor’s warrant from Gov. Brad Henry or his successor, Stubblefield said. The governor’s warrant would authorize Florida law enforcement officials to come to Oklahoma, take Pielsticker into custody and return with him to Florida to face the bad check complaint, Stubblefield said.“ In the (90-day) interim, we set a court date — a preliminary hearing conference — that is a review date to see if the governor’s warrant was issued,” Stubblefield said. “If it has, he will be taken into custody and returned to Florida.” A preliminary hearing conference for Pielsticker has been set for 8:45 a.m. Dec. 1, court documents show. Bryan County authorities said it is not likely that a bad-check case such as Pielsticker’s will be pursued by Florida authorities.

“It depends on the agency,” Stubblefield said. “In a lot of cases, it depends on the seriousness of the offense — particularly if it’s a violent or sex offender. (sic) This fugitive from justice case is not something that is usually prosecuted.” However, even if the fugitive case is dismissed, the Florida bad check warrant still will be in effect, Stubblefield said. In theory, until the bad check case is resolved, Pielsticker could be arrested on the Florida warrant at any time if he is alleged to have violated traffic or other laws, Stubblefield said.

It’s been a long, bumpy road from Tulsa to Bryan County for Pielsticker and Arrow Trucking. The 61-year-old Tulsa-based flatbed carrier discontinued operations Dec. 22 after its lender, Transportation Alliance Bank of Ogden, Utah, canceled its fuel credit cards. The bank pulled the plug after it extended Arrow’s credit line — with no end in sight — during the previous month, attorneys for the bank said in court filings in January. Arrow filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection from creditors on Jan. 8.As a result of the cancellation of Arrow’s fuel credit cards, hundreds of Arrow drivers and their freight were stranded around the country without fuel or money to get home three days before Christmas.

Carter was one of them. “I’m shut down near Cheyenne, Wyo.,” Carter told the Tulsa World on Dec. 22. “They asked me to bring the truck and load into Tulsa, but I don’t have enough fuel to make it to Tulsa. ”Eventually, friends of his in Wyoming took up a collection and bought Carter a plane ticket back to his family in Florida for Christmas, he said. Carter’s plight as a marooned driver was shared by hundreds of Arrow drivers, 256 of whom hired a Philadelphia law firm to represent them in a class-action lawsuit against the Arrow Trucking bankruptcy estate.

In October, Arrow Trucking bankruptcy trustee Patrick J. Malloy III reached a proposed $1.58 million settlement agreement with the Philadelphia law firm. Under the proposed agreement, which must be approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Terrence L. Michael, the Arrow drivers represented by the Philadelphia firm would be paid from the bankruptcy estate’s assets their priority wage claims and claims arising from Arrow’s violation of a federal employment law. Hundreds of other former Arrow employees have filed wage and benefit claims against the bankruptcy estate, court documents show. Several states have filed tax claims against the Arrow bankruptcy estate, records show. Malloy estimates the estate’s assets at $8.55 million and liabilities at $98.97 million.

Transportation Alliance Bank, Arrow Trucking’s lender, is suing the company and company executives Doug Pielsticker, Jonathan Moore and Joseph Mowry, alleging that they swindled the bank out of $12.5 million through a scheme of inflated invoices and hidden financial problems before Arrow collapsed on Dec. 22.The FBI has been conducting an inquiry in the case since early in the year, court documents and officials say.

Many Arrow drivers got angry and sought their back pay and benefits from state agencies and the bankruptcy court. Carter, who was a police officer in Red Boiling Springs, Tenn., from 1987 to 1992, filed a criminal complaint against Pielsticker, the man who signed his $1,015.73 paycheck that bounced. Now driving for Swift Transportation of Phoenix, Ariz., Carter said he filled out the criminal complaint paperwork in Suwannee County, Fla., early in the year. He erred on some of the information on the complaint form, he said, and dropped the matter for months. In August, he resumed the process of filing a criminal complaint for issuing a worthless check, he said and court documents show. “As a former police officer, I knew it was not only a civil violation; it was a criminal violation,” Carter said. “There’s nobody above the law.“I don’t care whether you’re wearing mud-stained boots or high-dollar fashion shoes. If you break the law, you’re supposed to go to jail.”

* Edited: Paragraphs mine

All of that in bankruptcy and he is arrested for a $1,000 bad check. He committed fraud against his bank and apparently will walk away. If this is the only thing that shows up he can probably pay the check and this will go away. I remember many years ago there was a local company that went into bankruptcy. The president of the corporation was arrested for having a lot of bad checks out. I don't remember the outcome. He may or may not have gone to jail.