Lawsuit Claims Pielsticker and Arrow Trucking Submitted False Invoices

By Lori Fullbright, The News On 6

TULSA, OK -- While the FBI and IRS investigate Tulsa's Arrow Trucking Company, the lawsuits are flying. The most recent was filed by a bank, Transportation Alliance Bank, that accuses the company's owners and top managers of lying, cheating and fraud.

As with any lawsuit, these are only allegations until something can be proven in court. But, these are doozies -- forging documents and lying to a bank to keep it from knowing how bad off the company was doing.

The lawsuit also accuses company owner Doug Pielsticker of using company money to fund a ritzy lifestyle.

Read the entire lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, the bank agreed to buy some of Arrow Trucking's accounts receivable owed to Arrow by customers. 

Last July, the bank says it figured out Arrow was sending an invoice to a customer for one amount, then sending an invoice to the bank for a much higher amount. 

When the bank wanted to know why, according to the lawsuit, Arrow claimed a clerk had made mistakes and over billed nearly $2 million, so they had fired the clerk. When it kept happening, the bank sent someone to Arrow and had leaders of the trucking company call customers in front of them, to verify the invoice amounts, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims the bank guy and an Arrow guy sat in an office and the Arrow guy called about 30 customers who claimed, yes, those amounts you see on the invoices are right. But, it says the bank later learned those people weren't customers at all, but rather people in cahoots with Arrow to lie to the bank. The bank says Arrow sent them thousands of fake invoices to the tune of $27 million.

The bank also learned in December, that Arrow hadn't paid the Medicare and social security withholdings on employee paychecks for a year but, spent that money instead -- $9 million. It says even though the company was dying, Doug Pielsticker was lining his own pockets, getting a check cut to him on November 6th for $20,000, three days later another $20,000, November 25th $40,000, December 3rd $12,000 and December 15th $20,000 and he wasn't the only one. According to the lawsuit, he used company money to buy a new Maserati, which starts at $100,000-grand, a Bentley at about $200,000 and a Cessna plane, which could be a $1 million or more.

1/9/2010  Related Story: Arrow Trucking Lawsuit Alleges Millions Of Dollars In Fraud