East St. Louis Trucking Company Owner Sentenced For Making False Statements

The United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, Stephen R. Wigginton, announced today that William Patrick “Pat” Clark, 40, of Worden, IL, the owner, operator, and president of Clark Trucking and Excavation, LLC, which was located at 912 Market Street in East St. Louis, Illinois, was sentenced to 33 months in prison, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release, a $1,000 special assessment, and ordered to make restitution to his truck drivers in the total amount of $273,118.43. In a September 2013 trial, a jury found Clark guilty on ten felony counts charging him with making false statements.

Clark unlawfully profited from a scheme in which he submitted to the Missouri Department of Transportation false payroll certifications claiming to have paid Davis-Bacon Act required prevailing wages to his employees on the federally funded I-64 Highway project. Clark cheated his employees by paying only about $15 per hour, rather than the required $35.45 per hour (without approved fringe benefits) for truck drivers on the project. Nine of his drivers testified at trial. Clark also signed a sworn affidavit falsely claiming satisfaction of labor laws pertaining to the payment of wages to workers in connection with the I-64 project. Clark Trucking had collected about $1.6 million for its hauling work.

The charges in this case followed an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General-Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations. The case was handled by Assistant United States Attorneys Michael J. Quinley and Stuart Zander.