A 21-year-old college soccer goalkeeper from Ohio is dead after authorities say an Uzbek national rear-ended his Honda Accord on Interstate 71 in Madison County, Ohio, on July 5.
Tobias “Toby” Forsythe, a goalkeeper for the University of Massachusetts Lowell men’s soccer team, was struck and killed by 42-year-old Bekhzod Asrarov, who entered the United States through the Biden administration’s diversity visa lottery program.
Court documents reveal Asrarov could not speak or understand English well enough to communicate with responding state troopers without Google Translate, despite holding an Ohio commercial driver’s license.
Asrarov allegedly removed a dashboard camera from his truck after the fatal crash, an act authorities say was an effort to conceal or destroy evidence.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy responded to the crash on X, writing: “We cannot let truckers like Asrarov, who can’t read our road signs or speak to law enforcement, drive 80,000-pound rigs on America’s highways.”
A researcher known as Nodawolf, who was granted anonymity by Fox News Digital due to death threats he has received, has been investigating what he describes as an interconnected network of Uzbek-linked trucking companies operating across southwest Ohio communities including Loveland, Middletown, and Maineville.
“All of them have English violations and have manipulated ELDs,” Nodawolf said, referring to electronic logging devices designed to enforce federal limits on how long drivers can remain behind the wheel.
Nodawolf also told Fox News Digital: “I mean, it’s clearly obvious that they either don’t understand our laws, they don’t care about our laws, or they know our laws and they’re taking advantage of it.”
A Fox News Digital review identified hundreds of trucking companies registered in Maineville and surrounding southwest Ohio communities, with dozens registered in recent years showing serious Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration safety violations.
A trucking industry veteran, speaking anonymously for safety reasons, described a growing fraud scheme known as “chameleon carriers,” where operators establish networks of legally distinct companies sharing the same drivers, trucks, and operations.
The scheme begins when operators create one company that is “quote-unquote legitimate,” then build out additional carriers and authorities while using identical underlying assets spread across all of them.
“If they have 10 inspections and 10 violations across 10 different companies, that doesn’t hurt the safety rating as much,” the industry veteran said. “But if it was one company that had 10 inspections and 10 violations, that one company is going to get hammered.”
He further warned that if one carrier is shut down or loses insurance, “they’re able to immediately move all of the equipment and drivers and everything under one of the different companies,” adding: “Their operation never stops. There’s no way to shut them down.”
The veteran also alleged the structure enables cargo theft, with one company disappearing after obtaining a valuable shipment while the broader network continues uninterrupted, noting: “They lost one of their shell companies, basically, but they just got $5 million in iPads.”
Victor Louis, whose Cincinnati-based company Load Secure verifies the identities of drivers entering its network, said local advertisements promising a commercial driver’s license in as little as one week are an immediate red flag.
“Trucking is such an inherently dangerous activity. Essentially, you’re driving a 40-ton missile down the road,” Louis said. “To think that someone is going to be certified to do that within a week, that may or may not speak English, like that doesn’t make any sense.”
Louis told Fox News Digital that roughly 15% to 20% of drivers entering Load Secure’s network are non-domiciled foreign nationals holding commercial licenses issued by states where they do not reside.
“What we see with that market of non-domiciled drivers is a high propensity of cargo theft, an extremely high propensity,” Louis said. “It’s wreaking havoc on our supply chain. We don’t know if things are being tampered with. This exposes our supply chains.”
The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles confirmed it is reviewing the state’s approximately 5,000 nondomiciled commercial driver’s license holders in coordination with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, with roughly 1,500 credentials no longer active as the review continues.
The Departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, and Justice have announced a coordinated crackdown on trucking and CDL fraud, covering inspections at more than 200 driving schools across 23 states, investigations from more than 1,000 leads, and a new multi-state Department of Justice task force focused on trucking-related fraud and roadway safety.
A Notice of Proposed Removal was issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration for Turan CDL School, a Middletown-based company that advertised CDL training to Uzbek speakers, with some advertisements suggesting students could obtain a license without first learning English.
“Too many American lives have been lost or permanently changed because illegal aliens who have no business being on our roads have been granted CDLs,” said Senator Mullin at a press conference, pledging that federal authorities would prioritize going after individuals suspected of accepting payments to help others bypass CDL requirements.
