NEWARK, N.J. - The owner of a group of freight payment, logistics, and shipping businesses headquartered in Branchburg, New Jersey, was sentenced today to 50 months in prison for wire fraud and money laundering, Acting U.S. Attorney William E. Fitzpatrick announced.
Shirley Sooy, 66, of Fort Smith, Arkansas, previously pleaded before U.S. District Judge William Walls to an information charging her with one count of wire fraud and one count of transacting in criminal proceeds. Judge Walls imposed the sentence today in Newark federal court.
According to the documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
From 2010 through April 2013, Sooy, through a collection of businesses operating under the umbrella of the “TransVantage Group," entered contracts with corporate clients - referred to in a criminal complaint as the “victim companies." TransVantage audited freight bills generated by common carriers and freight forwarders hired by the victim companies. TransVantage was obligated to pay the audited and approved freight bills to the carriers from funds provided by those companies, and the funds were supposed to be held in trust by TransVantage until paid over to the carriers. The victim companies also paid TransVantage for its purported auditing services, payments separate and apart from the carrier payment funds.
Sooy operated TransVantage as a Ponzi scheme, which resulted in substantial losses to the victim companies. Sooy and others comingled the funds from the victim companies - funds that were to have been paid to carriers - and then misused those funds in various ways. They paid unauthorized operating expenses and personal expenses.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Walls sentenced Sooy to two years of supervised release and ordered her to pay restitution of $1,185,404.
Acting U.S. Attorney Fitzpatrick credited postal inspectors of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, under the direction of Postal Inspector in Charge James V. Buthorn; and special agents of IRS-Criminal Investigation, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Jonathan D. Larsen, for the investigation leading to today’s guilty sentencing.
The government is represented by Senior Litigation Counsel Andrew Leven of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Economic Crimes Unit in Newark.
Defense counsel: Michael J. Rogers Esq., Somerville, New Jersey
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
