Eleven Names, Seven Fake Carriers, Zero Checks: The Zigmantas Case and What It Exposes About FMCSA Registration

Eleven Names, Seven Fake Carriers, Zero Checks

On May 6, 2026, U.S. District Judge Elaine E. Bucklo sentenced Aivaras Zigmantas, 41, of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, to 60 months in federal prison for wire fraud. The charge understates the architecture of what he built.

From March 2020 through September 2023, Zigmantas and his associates stole more than $10.1 million from approximately 90 interstate shipments — liquor and commercial-grade copper being the primary targets — while intending to take at least $14.6 million before federal investigators shut the operation down. He was ordered to pay $10.3 million in restitution to 24 victim companies. The case was prosecuted under the Department of Justice's Trade Fraud Task Force.

The mechanics were straightforward and devastatingly effective: Zigmantas posed as a representative of both real, operating carriers and entirely fictitious ones, submitted bids on loads moving across state lines, induced shippers and brokers to release freight to him, and then diverted those shipments to locations of his choosing.

What made it work for three years wasn't sophistication — it was the absence of basic checks.

The FMCSA Registration Gap He Exploited

Court records name at least seven fictitious motor carriers Zigmantas registered — Best Global Express, Mato Trans, Martin Global, JRO Global, VD Transco, SMD Transco, and DMFL Express. Every one of them was eventually placed out of service by FMCSA. But before that happened, each entity had a live FMCSA authority record that appeared legitimate at a glance.

The address details in those records are where the scheme unraveled — but only in hindsight. Several of the fictitious carriers used UPS Store mailbox addresses as their principal place of business, which does not meet FMCSA's regulatory definition of a valid business address. Others listed addresses that actually belonged to unrelated, legitimate motor carriers already in operation.

Zigmantas also operated under at least 11 documented aliases — names including Rolandas Butikis, Vismantas Danyla, Tom Kempinski, Egidijus Stankus, and Kathy Stone — cycling through them across different carrier registrations and broker interactions to prevent any single identity from accumulating a traceable fraud history.

The playbook is a textbook chameleon-carrier operation: register a new entity, run loads under it until suspicion builds or a complaint surfaces, discard that identity, and surface under a new name with a fresh DOT number.

What This Means for Vetting Carriers

The Zigmantas case didn't require a sophisticated adversary. It required brokers and shippers who stopped at surface-level authority confirmation. A carrier shows active FMCSA authority? Load released. That single data point — active status — is the entire gate for millions of dollars in freight.

Active authority is a necessary condition for a legitimate carrier. It is not sufficient proof of one.

Three deeper signals would have flagged every fictitious entity Zigmantas registered:

Authority age. Shell carriers in freight fraud schemes are almost universally new. A carrier registered days or weeks before contact, with no operating history, no safety data, and no inspection record, is a carrier you cannot verify through any means other than its own word. Zigmantas built fresh entities precisely because a new DOT number carries no negative history — and, critically, no positive history either.

Principal place of business address. A UPS Store mailbox is not a trucking terminal. Cross-referencing a carrier's registered address against commercial mail forwarding databases, satellite imagery, or public SOS records takes minutes. A street address that resolves to a postal retail location, a residential apartment, or — as in several of Zigmantas's registrations — the premises of a completely different motor carrier is a hard stop, not a yellow flag.

Identity layering across entities. Zigmantas reused contact information, officer names, and address fragments across multiple carrier registrations. Shared phone numbers, emails, or officer names connecting a newly registered carrier to a previously revoked DOT number is the clearest signal available that a new entity is not new at all. This is the pattern that Operating Authority & Insurance monitoring is specifically designed to surface — the web of identifiers that links a clean-looking DOT record back to a prior enforcement action.

Red Flags to Check on Every New Carrier

• Authority age under 90 days — treat any carrier that registered within three months of first contact as unverified until additional identity checks pass
• UPS Store, mailbox service, or co-tenant address — confirm the principal place of business is a real, operating facility before releasing a load
• Address matches another carrier's registered location — two carriers sharing an address is either a shell layered on a legitimate entity or a stolen address; neither is acceptable without explanation
• Officer or owner name appears on a revoked or out-of-service DOT record — the person, not just the entity, is the risk
• Phone or email shared across multiple carrier records — particularly across carriers in different states or with different DOT numbers registered within months of each other
• No inspection history, no safety rating, no SMS data — a carrier moving interstate freight with zero roadside inspection records has either been operating illegally or has not been operating at all
• Aliases or name variations in officer fields — minor spelling differences in an owner's name across related records are a consistent signature of identity cycling

How to Protect Your Business

The Zigmantas operation ran from 2020 to 2023 — three full years — before federal charges were filed. During that window, 24 companies absorbed losses totaling more than $10 million. Most of those victims released freight to carriers whose FMCSA records showed a business address that did not exist and an operating history that had not accumulated a single inspection.

The corrective is not complexity. It is sequence.

First: Never treat an active FMCSA authority record as the end of vetting. It is the start. Confirm the DOT number was not recently reactivated after a prior revocation. Confirm the entity name was not recently changed. Confirm the physical address is a real facility.

Second: Cross-reference officer names and contact details against other carrier records before the first load. A single officer name appearing on a revoked entity and a new entity is disqualifying without a documented, verifiable explanation.

Third: Apply heightened scrutiny to any carrier offering rates that undercut the market. Zigmantas won loads by making competitive offers — the economics of a carrier with no actual trucks, no insurance costs, and no intent to deliver are very different from a legitimate operation.

Fourth: Verify insurance certificates directly with the issuing agency, not through documents the carrier supplies. A certificate of insurance that cannot be confirmed through an independent source is not a certificate — it is a document.

Five years in prison and $10.3 million in restitution is the outcome for Zigmantas. For the 24 companies that released freight to his fictitious carriers, the outcome was losing goods they cannot fully recover. The checks that would have stopped him were available before the first load moved.