Trump-aligned gas stations allegedly used classic Trump business model
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Yoni and Randy could do anything. Especially run up bills on the joint’s credit. And why not? Nobody’s gonna pay for it anyway. And as soon as the deliveries are made in the front door, you move the stuff out the back and sell it at a discount. You take a two hundred dollar case of booze and you sell it for a hundred. It doesn’t matter. It’s all profit!
A lawsuit filed this month alleges that there’s a simple reason some stations in the Freedom Fuel Network — the chain of discount gas stations promoted by the White House — have been able to sell gas so cheaply: Some $4 million worth of the gas is stolen.
KRSM, the business named in the suit, denies this accusation.
Freedom Fuel stations located around Philadelphia and New Jersey burst into public view in the run-up to the July Fourth holiday, when President Donald Trump posted praise for their discounted pump prices, writing “They are doing this because they love the U.S.A.” The White House later posted a video of drivers filling up at one of the stations and thanking Trump for the low prices — at the time, $3.47 a gallon in honor of the 47th president, though they’ve since crept up.
Neither the White House nor the network’s owners would explain exactly how the stations were able to sell fuel far cheaper than their competitors. The White House told reporters that Freedom Fuel was simply a private company lowering its margins for patriotic reasons and declined to disclose the people behind it — who turned out to be a former New Jersey mayor and NFL special teams coach for the Baltimore Ravens, a GOP donor.
POLITICO’s reporting also linked six of the stations via business records to a New Jersey fuel businessperson named Shamikh Kazmi who, along with his brother Syed Kazmi, have been involved in several lawsuits. The Freedom Fuel Network’s website said that despite “misinformation and baseless speculation … Freedom Fuel Network is proudly lowering prices to benefit our community and strengthen our local economy.”
But according to a complaint filed Aug. 19 by Georgia-based fuel supplier Mansfield Oil Co. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Syed Kazmi’s company KRSM acquired over 1 million gallons of fuel from a Sunoco terminal in Twin Oaks valued at around $4 million — and never paid for it. KRSM sold some of the fuel, the lawsuit alleges, to stations within the Freedom Fuel Network, which now claims to operate 29 locations.
“KRSM was able to sell such fuel for such low prices and garner such publicity because it never paid Plaintiffs for such fuel,” reads the complaint.
These are people who have learned from the master:
The Taj Mahal, the most expensive casino ever built in Atlantic City filed for bankruptcy in 1991, just two years after its glitzy grand opening. The bankruptcy meant companies like Triad Building Specialties didn’t get paid.
After years of fighting through bankruptcy court, the Jenkins ended up with just 30 cents on the dollar. Their company was owed $231,000, according to the bankruptcy claim filed in the case. The Jenkins family received $70,000.
The Jenkins family realized they weren’t alone. Dozens of contractors who had worked on the construction were also getting stiffed.
For the record, Trump’s extensive record of ripping off mom-and-pop contractors got far less sustained attention in 2016 than stories about people giving money to the Clinton Foundation and getting nothing in return. True story!