Connecticut Bus Company Sentenced in Falsified Logbooks Case
The DOT inspector general's office announced that Wisla Express, LLC was fined and sentenced to probation, and the company's owner and manager were ordered to divest themselves of all ownership interests in it.
Wisla Express, LLC of New Britain, Conn., was sentenced Jan. 17 in U.S. District Court in Hartford, to five years of probation and fined $75,000 in connection with a case involving falsified documents provided to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration during a 2010 inspection of Wisla. DOT's inspector general's office announced the sentence and reported Wisla's owner, Elzbieta Szteborowski, and manager Dariusz Szteborowski were ordered to divest themselves of all ownership interests in Wisla and may not reacquire any ownership interests during the probation. In addition, Dariusz Szteborowski is not permitted to work for Wisla during the probation period.
Guilty pleas were entered in February 2013 by Wisla and Dariusz Szteborowski. Wisla is a commercial passenger carrier operating vans, mini-buses, and tour buses.
"The investigation disclosed that Szteborowski created and maintained false and fraudulent driver time records or caused others to create false and fraudulent driver logs in order to meet the prescribed reporting requirements. Szteborowski and others working with and for Szteborowski and Wisla often assigned drivers to trips knowing that the drivers would be exceeding the regulated limits of on-duty driving time. In order to hide these violations from FMCSA inspectors, Szteborowski instructed the drivers and/or other Wisla employees to record falsely in the logs that the driver was off-duty during those times, and then Szteborowski submitted the falsified logs to FMCSA during its inspection," according to the IG's news release.