THE BOOK
FEDEX RACISM, DRUGS, THEFTS
& FRAUD
Since I’m sure many will ask...was I fired by
Fedex? The answer is NO. I resigned after I finished working undercover in investigations with government agents
of the Office of Special Investigations ( OSI ) of the Air Force in which they uncovered
nationwide FRAUD by FEDEX of every
CSS military shipment which they
investigated . I would have resigned sooner but I was asked by OSI agents
to stay on until the investigation was completed. When it was finished...I resigned. I could no longer tolerate the RACISM, ILLEGAL DRUGS, THEFT
CORRUPTION ... and LIES.
INTRODUCTION
I signed on with the best intentions
as I am sure it was with many. I had
been told that Fred Smith was a great man and that Federal Express was a great
place to work. The sad truth is ...that Fred Smith is a liar and has forged
another man’s signature to get millions of dollars from a bank, and yes he was
indicted for it. It is also true...that he has hit and killed a black man with his car and left him to die on the
street to die like an animal. He was driving without a license and drove away
without even stopping to see if the victim was alive ( he died ). When he was
caught by police of course he claimed he didn’t realize he had hit anyone. Fred
lives on a southern plantation with slave quarters so possibly he just thought
he had killed something less than human and didn’t need to stop. History shows
that if you come from money you can get away with a lot. My guess is that without his mommy’s and
daddy’s money Fred Smith may have been no more than a ditch digger and possibly
even a common criminal given his penchant for forgery and lying not to mention
being a HIT and RUN KILLER.
AS FOR CREATING FEDEX ( Federal
Express ) Fred had his parents money. IT WAS FORMER UPS MANAGEMENT
...THAT CAME IN AND MADE THE COMPANY
WORK. THEY DESERVE THE REAL CREDIT, BECAUSE WITHOUT THEM, THERE WOULD NEVER
HAVE BEEN A FEDEX...
Fedex spends millions of dollars
annually telling people how great they are and they put on a flashy picture but
the truth is... THEY LIE A LOT.
Perhaps Fedex gets it’s character from their CEO
Fred Smith who is nothing more than a common
Liar and Forger and just another
Hit and Run Killer.
While working there as a courier I
was repeatedly instructed to cheat the
customers and also to commit fraud against and betray the United States
military. After collecting evidence which I thought would prove fraud, I went
to investigators at the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and worked with them
in conducting a nationwide undercover investigation of Federal Express. When
the investigation with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations was
completed it showed that Federal Express was committing fraud against the U.S. Military for millions of dollars with a
service which didn’t exist.
I contacted the Philadelphia Inquirer. They conducted their
own investigation then did two major articles concerning the FRAUD. After the first
article in the Inquirer I contacted
ABC’s 20-20 which also did a
feature.
The 20-20 story detailed the FRAUD
and CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD BY FEDEX. And also the rampant DRUG ABUSE, DRUG SHIPMENTS and THEFT of
DRUGS at Federal Express and ended Federal Express’s CSS service. Fred Smith
was so mad that ABC had told the TRUTH
about the FRAUD, THEFTS and DRUGS that he canceled ( $100,000,000 ) one hundred million dollars of
advertisements on ABC ( but he couldn’t sue them for telling the truth ). And
the ABC people Laughed at Fred &
Federal Express ( ha ha ). In this book you will find facts that may
forever change the way you look at Fedex.
As an employee at Fedex I quickly
learned that Fedex delivers millions if not billions (yes I mean billions)
of dollars of illegal drugs to OUR
neighborhoods everyday. And many of these illegal DRUGS ( excluding
those stolen by couriers and management at Fedex for their own personal use ) wind up in the bodies of
children. While employed at Fedex I
went to management about the Drug Shipments and Drug abuse by Fedex employees.
Management either wanted to steal the Drug shipments for themselves or wouldn’t
take action. They actually wanted the illegal drug shipment business.
After years of research and talking
to so many employees at Fedex. I can
only believe ( and other’s have also told me )
that Fedex Management looks at the illegal Drug shipments as REVENUE. That to Fedex management the illegal Drug
shipments are just another way to bring in more money. Fedex’s ‘niche‘, they have found a place in the
market that UPS, Airborne, USPS and other carriers don’t want any part of. Many times I have heard a Fedex courier or
member of Fedex management boast that, “we’re the NUMBER ONE shipper of
illegal drugs in America”. And they seemed as proud as a peacock when they
said it.
Currently I am working on a second
book concerning Fedex. I would like to
thank the many Fedex employees who contributed information regarding illegal
drugs shipments and drug abuse there, and also the rampant theft and other
wrongs within FEDEX today. { keep them coming }
SO MANY EMPLOYEES HATE FEDEX
MANAGEMENT
As a side note to ALL
FEDEX employees. When I worked at Fedex my manager told me that any
person who even spoke pro union at Fedex ( then called Federal Express )
would be fired. Today, from regularly
speaking to Fedex employees all across America I know there are a lot of
employees who feel Fedex is “screwing them” and many feel that their jobs are
on the line if they vote for or try to get a union in to help them get fair
treatment or decent benefits and pay.
So
I urge you all, MAKE COPIES
of EVERY DOCUMENT and TAPE RECORD every conversation with
management ( where legal) even phone conversations which you feel might help you later on
should you find your job in jeopardy or that you are being harassed.
(especially if you are pro union or Black)
If you are a Black or other
minority, you may want to check
with your local or national NAACP about how you might determine if you have
been discriminated against by your manager or managers by way of your “performance review” evaluation.
Or singled out for termination or harassment for doing nothing more or less
than your white co-worker does everyday, but just because you have dark skin.
Talk to other Black co-workers about discrimination or harassment.
I have talked to a lot of black
couriers (even their lawyers ) from different areas and many believed they were being discriminated against or
held back because of their color by racist white management at Fedex. But many are too afraid to complain as
individuals, feeling they would be singled out and fired by RACIST white Fedex
management if they spoke up.
I was told by Fedex management that they wouldn’t have blacks (
they called them niggers ) in
management positions at their stations. And that they could easily get away
with it by way of “performance evaluations”. (CLUE... CLUE... CLUE)
I have to wonder how many times in
how many stations all across America situations like that exist.
***** But wait...before we get
into the book. As I said earlier
I regularly speak with current and former Fedex employees all across
America, many of them are also FED UP
and disgusted by the many despicable and sometimes illegal acts by Fedex
management. Many of them tell me about the Racism, Illegal Drugs, Drug
Shipments and Thefts of Valuables within Fedex even today.
The following is a very recent interview with a former member of Fedex
management who worked for Fedex for approximately sixteen years.
For reasons of privacy I will
only refer to him as AL. Please be
assured that the interview is real (even tape recorded) and that AL speaks the truth from his heart. Also
realize that AL is a white married male with children.
Initially my main thoughts were
to talk to Al about the drugs and thefts at Fedex. But I soon learned that
having been part of “white management” at Fedex, Al had much to talk about
concerning RACISM by white Racist Fedex
Management. Racism, which he as a sixteen year veteran and member of management
has seen and believes permeates the entire company even today. While some will
say “ hey Fedex employs a lot of Blacks and has some of them in lower
management positions”. I as a former
“white employee of Fedex” has heard and seen things that Blacks there will
never see or know about. Because they aren’t allowed to...they are NOT
WHITE. I can honestly say that I NEVER knew of even one white member
of Fedex management that believed
Blacks were equal to whites. Never knew of even one white manager at Fedex that
didn’t believe that Blacks were stupid.
Now a former member of Fedex management sets the record straight.
Hopefully someday even more “honest white employees” will someday tell
the truth about the racism at Fedex. And
hopefully a LAWSUIT...will follow....
THE INTERVIEW
Gary, “ Al, when did you start
working for Fedex”?
AL, “I started in 79...1979 and I worked there for sixteen years”.
Gary, “have you seen a lot of
illegal drugs shipped through Fedex”?
Al, ”yes quite a lot, at Fedex we
bragged about the illegal drugs we shipped...management couriers everybody. We
were the number one shipper of illegal drugs in the whole United States.
Management knew, but it was considered revenue, basically everybody in the
company knew especially management.”
Al, “ I remember this one young
fellow who got fired for telling the police there was drugs in a shipment. It
was in Arizona and the drugs were to be delivered to his neighborhood. He was
married and had children living there. He told his manager that a package
was a drug shipment, his manager told him not to open it but to just go
ahead and deliver it to the drug dealer. He took it to the police,
when the police opened the shipment they found the drugs. His manager fired
him because he took the shipment to the police rather than deliver them to the
drug dealer.
Gary,” sounds like Fedex looked at
illegal drugs shipments as revenue”?
AL, “ yes it was looked at
exactly as revenue. Fedex ships an enormous amount of illegal drugs daily.
If the drug shipments were even five
percent of Fedex’s total revenue and the revenue was a couple billion dollars...
five percent of a couple billion dollars is a heck of a lot of money. It was
almost like a BIG private account”.
Gary, “earlier you mentioned an incident about illegal drugs at the
Philadelphia Airport concerning Fedex employees, could you recall that event
again”?
AL, “ yeah, they were loading an
airplane and they found some drugs that they thought was cocaine. They decided
to get high and also that the cocaine would help them load the plane faster.
There were three (3) managers and three loaders. But what they thought was
cocaine was actually very strong heroin. They nearly died of heroin overdose.”
Gary, “ and these were the people
responsible for loading the airplane?
What were there titles? And was anything ever done to them for it”?
AL, “ They were three managers, a
ramp agent and two floaters. And NO, none of them were disciplined for
it”.
Gary, “Al have you seen a lot of
illegal drug shipments at Fedex”?
AL, “ YES many, all the time, as a courier and as a manager. Having
worked there for sixteen years I believe Fedex couriers carry millions of
dollars of illegal drugs on a daily basis, in fact I know they do.
Gary, “ have you ever seen Fedex
employees use illegal drugs on the job or in the station”?
AL, “ Many times. It’s an everyday thing at Fedex. A lot of times couriers or managers would take a just a
portion of the drug shipment so that the drug dealers would continue to make
their shipments through Fedex. That way they had a regular supply of whatever
drugs were being shipped”.
Gary, “ without naming names have
you ever seen Fedex management using illegal drugs on the job or in the station”?
AL, “ Yeah I have on numerous
occasions”.
Gary, “ have you ever seen couriers
or management steal illegal drugs from shipments”?
Al, “ Yes many times, both couriers
and management at Fedex”.
Gary, “where did you go for
management training while at Fedex”?
Al, “ Olive Branch Mississippi.”
Gary, “is there any incident that
sticks out from that training”?
AL, “yeah there is, we were asked if
we had any questions, a woman manager raised her hand and asked if our
retirement package was going to improve because it wasn’t really that good as
it was. Fred Smith tore into her like she was dirt, he went into a rage because
someone would question Fedex’s policy. He just totally humiliated her in front
of everyone. He beat her down so hard
she quit. After that everyone was afraid to ask anymore questions.
Gary,” Al did you ever hear the word
Nigger used while in management training in Olive Branch?”
AL,” yeah and even more racial words
and phrases. If there were Blacks in the room they talked nice to them, but
if none were present or it was in a private conversation, management down there
implied that the Blacks were lowering the standards at Fedex and there
shouldn’t be too many in management”.
Gary, “ after the training in Olive
Branch did you receive any more management training anywhere else”?
AL, “ some in the King of Prussia
District headquarters in Pennsylvania and often in the station where I was a
manager”.
Gary, “ what were some of the things
you were taught by the district director”?
AL, “ Remember, we are always right,
never admit wrong. Fire ANYONE and
EVERYONE who causes problems or questions managements decisions. If you can’t
find a reason to fire someone...make up a reason and fire them.
Gary, “as a manager who did you report to on a daily basis”?
AL, “ a senior station manager, Mike
Mitchell was my senior station manager.
Gary, “so Mike Mitchell got his
orders from the District Director, who got his orders from the Eastern Region
and the Eastern Region got their orders directly from Headquarters in Memphis”?
AL, “ that’s right, not a lot of a
ladder at Fedex”.
Gary, “ did your senior station
manager every give you orders concerning the policy on Blacks”?
AL, “yes, that I was not to hire them. Fedex didn’t want a lot of Black couriers.
Gary, “ so Mike Mitchell, the
senior station manager told you straight out that you were not to hire Blacks”?
AL, “ yes...well he called
them Niggers, Mike said I was not to hire any Niggers unless instructed to by
him . Otherwise I was to tell them we weren’t hiring”.
Gary, “did he tell you those instructions were from district headquarters”?
AL, “He left me with no doubt they
were, he certainly implied they were, and NO station manager would adopt a
policy like that on his own. Orders and policy are sent down from company
headquarters only. No manager makes decisions on his own, the decisions are
made at the top and passed down. Of course some policies are not written
on paper. So no one can follow a paper trail.
Gary, “ were you shocked or
surprised at this policy against Blacks”?
AL, “ yes I was real surprised, and
I didn’t like it but I was younger and I had just made manager and I had a home
and a family to provide for. I didn’t like it but I was afraid of losing my job
so I kept my mouth shut. Also I had worked at Fedex for a long time and I
was used to seeing Blacks getting screwed and discriminated against...held back
and so forth. What I think really surprised me was that it was company
policy...and yet it did seem as though it always was that way.
Gary, “ did he say anything else
about Blacks”?
AL, “ well, one of the main things
was they wanted to avoid having too many blacks in management and absolutely
none in our station. That they had to have a few as tokens...but only as few as
absolutely necessary.
Gary, “ how did Fedex manage
to keep the Blacks out of management”?
AL, “ easy, give them lower
scores on their evaluations, usually on paperwork but it could be anything. You
would overlook clerical errors on white couriers paperwork, and embellish the
clerical errors and other minor things on Black couriers paperwork. Mark them
down for things like having their shirt tails out, having a truck door open,
numerous ways to do it”.
Gary, “ you mean they intentionally
gave the Blacks lower grades compared
to whites”.
AL, “ I only know what I was told.
That it was company policy”.
Gary, “do you think you were the
only Fedex manager told to do that Al”?
AL, “ no I don’t, I’m sure I
wasn’t. And I know over the years at
Fedex I’ve both seen and heard of many better performing Black couriers getting
lower performance evaluations then their white counterparts who weren‘t nearly
as good. Even I was promoted ahead of better performing Blacks, my
paperwork was very sloppy and I did a lot of things wrong that would have kept
a Black out of management. Yet I was white and they needed a manager so I
was promoted ahead of more deserving and better Black couriers”.
Gary, “ when your senior station
manager told you not to hire Blacks...did he warn you not to tell anyone about
it”?
AL, “ it was an unwritten
rule, we weren’t even to tell our wives. It was understood just like you NEVER
said you liked JEWS. Certain things at
Fedex just weren’t acceptable.”
Gary, “wait a minute Al, did you
mean that saying you liked Jews or had Jewish friends wasn’t acceptable at
Fedex?”
Al,
“that’s exactly what I’m saying
Gary, you worked there, did you ever see a Jew working there...no!!! Management at Fedex hated Jews and if
you said you liked them or said something good about them...well it just might
result in your removal from management at Fedex. They can’t always control what
the couriers think, but if you’re in management and you let management know
that you are pro Jewish...well chances are you’ll go out the door before you go
up the ladder in management at Fedex. You’ll find very few Jews working there
that’s for sure.
Gary, “ did you ever question the
policy against hiring Blacks, did you ever talk to your district director about
it”?
AL “ well actually I did yes, we
were breaking from a meeting in King of Prussia. I asked him why Fedex didn’t
hire more Blacks into management or as workers. He said that Blacks just don’t
fit Fedex’s mode. That Fedex is a “young white progressive” company and that
Blacks didn’t fit the mode...that they would slow down the company’s progress”.
Gary, “ did he say anything else
about Blacks”?
AL,
“ other things too, but what I mostly remember is his warning me about
not telling anyone. He warned me that if I EVER told anyone about it that
Fedex would come after me, that I would be fired and I would never work for
anyone ever again. And that Fedex lawyers would come after me and ruin my
reputation, it really scared me to be honest”.
Gary, “ going back to your station
manager Mike Mitchell, would he be what you consider an alcoholic”?
AL, “ yeah Mike was an alcoholic, he
would come to work drunk often”.
Gary, “in regard to Black
employees at Fedex or even Black applicants did Mike ever ask you while you
were a manager, if a Black smelled or stunk”?
AL, “ yeah he would always
ask... [does that nigger smell or does the nigger speak Caucasian ] and he
never asked that about white employees. It was as though all Whites smelled
fine and all Blacks stunk.”
Gary, “ was it common for you to
hear Fedex management refer to Blacks as Niggers”?
Al, “ yes all the time as a
courier and even more as a manager. When there was a management meeting in
which there were no Blacks present it almost seemed like it was more of a Klan meeting than a company meeting. It seemed
that management was more concerned with putting down Blacks than anything else.
It seemed they all tried to out do each other with stories about this or that
“stupid nigger” or how they screwed this or that nigger. Or how there was
getting to be too many niggers at Fedex etc. It was pretty disgusting to be
honest. And when they went out to lunch, there seemed to be a contest to see
who could use the word nigger the most,
it was like the old time southern pictures when Blacks were talked about
and thought of as less that human.
Gary, “ what other names did you
hear management use to describe Blacks at Fedex”?
AL, “ just about all of them,
Jungle Bunny, Porch Monkey, Baboon, Apes, Spear Chucker..you name it they used
it and often. Just NEVER to a Blacks face. Yet... when they were in the
presence of Blacks...they pretended they were their friends.
Gary, “ in your sixteen years at
Fedex as a courier or as a manager did you ever hear of anyone being
reprimanded for using racial slurs”?
AL, “ no...in fact I know of a Black
guy, a friend of mine by the name of Kevin Brownly who got a letter of
reprimand because he said something back to a white woman at the Philadelphia
airport ramp. The woman was white and she called him a “LAZY NIGGER” and when
he said something back to her because she called him a nigger he got a letter
for it. She never got any reprimand even though there was proof that she called
him a nigger. Management did nothing to her.
Gary, “ is there a lot of ‘NP’ equipment at Fedex”?
AL, “ I was told there was ‘NP’
equipment at Fedex. An engineer at Fedex told me there was ‘NP’ equipment at
Fedex yes. He said that ‘NP’ stood for “Nigger Proof” meaning that if a Black
person could use ‘NP’ equipment anyone could. Only he didn’t use the word
Black. We had been talking about the tracker/scanners couriers use and he
informed me that they were engineered to be ‘NP’ Nigger Proof”. Otherwise ( the engineer ) he said,” we’d
have to fire ALL the niggers at Fedex”.
Gary, “ was that a common way of
thinking by white management at Fedex”?
AL, “ well in my sixteen years at
Fedex as a courier and in management...it was the ONLY way of thinking about
Blacks by Fedex management. I was even
told that by others in Fedex
management.”.
Gary, “ a few years ago I was having
a conversation with a white member of Fedex management in New Jersey, in the
course of the conversation he made the statement ( BBF the niggers ). Al,
what does ‘BBF’ stand for”?
AL, “ it was explained to me that
BB&F had a double meaning and was to be used by white managers against
Black employees. It stood for Basketball,
Boxing and Football and it also stood for Bullshit the Blacks
and Fuck’em.
Gary, “ could you explain to me how it
worked”?
AL,
“Fedex management believed that if a white manager talked to Blacks about one of those sports
they would win their hearts and minds. That Blacks were easily won over and fooled
if you spoke sports to them. And then they would cause less problems”.
Gary, “ when you say cause less
problems what do you mean”?
AL, “ less complaints, less GFT’s ,
less lawsuits if they got fired etc. Get the Blacks to think the white
managers were their friends and they wouldn’t
cause problems”.
Gary,” did management use this
BB&F tool on the whites too”?
AL, “ no, not really it was intended
to use on the Blacks”.
Gary, “ what about Fedex’s GFT
procedure and their personnel reps“?
Al,” the GFT is an internal
grievance procedure...and it’s a joke. Let me give YOU an example...when you
filed a GFT grievance against unfair treatment by management Darcell Cardwell
was the ‘Personnel Rep’. You discussed details of the grievance with her. You
as many other Fedex’s employees
believed she was there to help you and I’m sure that you confided many things
to her as one would do to their lawyer. She made you believe that some of the
things you were telling her were strictly secret between you and her.
Gary,” yes that’s right. She even
told me to tell her everything I knew, and that she wouldn’t tell management
anything I didn’t want her to. That she was there for me not management”.
AL, “ well she would go to us (
management ) and tell us everything you said...we would even laugh about
it...how foolish the couriers were and about some of the things they would tell
her. Gary, she was paid by Fedex and
worked for Fedex...I’m sure helping an employee was never part of her job”.
Gary, “ sounds like the personnel
reps are nothing more than a tool to pump information out of the employees for
management”.
AL, “ exactly ...and to keep Fedex
out of lawsuits”.
Gary, “as a courier or as a member
of Fedex management have you actually seen a Black person held back or not
given a job just because that person was Black”?
AL, “ yes Gary LOTS of times.
Numerous times I’ve seen Blacks come into the station and ask if there was any
positions open or was Fedex hiring. And they were told Fedex wasn’t hiring or
that the position had been filled...when in fact there were openings but they
were only hiring ‘whites’. It happened ALL the time. I’m sure it still does
today”.
Gary,
“ what about management positions have you actually seen Blacks passed over or
held back strictly because they were Black”?
AL, “ yes Blacks were passed over
for promotions many times just because they were Black”. Charles
Dorsey was Black, and several times he was passed over just because he was
Black. He was passed over for a sales position , a managers positions. And he
would have been perfect for those positions. He was very smart, clean looking,
he was tall with a loud clear voice...in short, he was a sharp clean looking
Black man who spoke well and clearly. A good family man too. But...he was Black
and to management he was just another ‘nigger’ who didn’t fit Fedex’s mode.
It
was a shame because Charles was a class guy.
Gary, “ I remember when I worked in
the ILG station in Delaware and they needed a manager on the evening shift. At
the time I though maybe Charles would be offered the job. But what management
actually did was...they brought in a white guy from the Philadelphia area who
had never even been in the station before. Did he have much experience”?
AL, “ very little if any at all.
They had to teach him everything and he had to learn nearly everything. And
Charles already knew everything he had years of experience and was VERY good at
it. But he was Black and he never had a chance at the job”.
Gary, “ if Charles had been white
would he have been considered for the position”?
AL, “ he would have had the position...he was perfect for the
position ... education, knowledge,
experience, excellent skills and he was clean cut...he had it ALL except ...he
was Black. They wouldn’t even consider
him”.
Gary, “can you give me another
example”?
AL,
“ Sure. There was a Black cargo handler. He had college was also clean
and very well spoken. He was working full time as a sales representative for
the McCormick seasoning company and doing very well. But at the time they would
only hire him on to handle freight part time at night. He was a hard worker. He
worked for McCormick in the daytime in sales and yet at Fedex he was only a
cargo handler part time at night.
A sales position came open in the
station and I know he asked management about it but they wouldn’t even consider
it. Mike ( senior station manager ) said no way, I don’t care if he is in
sales, there will be no niggers in management here. He was Black and he never
stood a chance.
Management
brought in a white guy that didn’t even work in the company. Just to make sure
a Black stayed at cargo handler”. Mike said company policy didn’t want many
Blacks in management and he especially didn’t want any ‘nigger’s in management
in his station.”
Gary, “ so Mike would actually say
to you that he wouldn’t allow Blacks in management in his station”?
AL, “ yes he did...he actually said
a number of times that he didn’t want any dammed nigger managers in his
station, that he didn’t want to have to deal with them or be around them. This
is a common thought with white Fedex
management even today. It’s just a little bit more sophisticated today. I
believe even there’s a group of Black Fedex workers in Memphis that have a
discrimination lawsuit against Fedex”.
Gary, “ what is the lawsuit about”?
AL, “ it’s mostly by Black cargo
handlers in Memphis. It seems that Fedex keeps so many of the Blacks in the
lowest paying positions and keeps them doing the hardest dirtiest work there.
It’s more like ‘slave labor’ very hard work and very low pay. And they’re mostly
supervised by whites. No different than the plantation days I guess. I’m
surprised that Fred Smith doesn’t offer the Black workers beds in the ‘Slave
Quarters’ on his plantation.
Gary, “ you know...basically, it
seems that Fedex management is telling the Blacks that you are ‘too stupid’ to manage yourself. That you
need to have superior white people over
you to tell you what to do and how’.
AL, “ not basically, that’s
exactly what they are telling them. Fedex is saying that Blacks are
stupid and whites are much smarter”. A white work force which comprises
approximately ten percent of the cargo handlers in Memphis is smarter than the other ninety percent of the work force
(Blacks) simply because they are white”.
Gary, “ if a white manager did an
unfair or biased evaluation on a Black employee, wasn’t that manager afraid
that the Black employee would file a discrimination against the company”?
AL, “ well, that’s one area where
the BB&F management tool came into play. Management knew that Blacks were
loyal and believed they could easily be fooled. So if a white manager talked
Basketball, Boxing, or Football to a Black employee and the Black believed the
manager was his friend, that manager felt he could get away with giving lower
evaluations to Blacks”. Although
sometimes I think the Blacks knew the
white manager didn’t like them, and they were just afraid of losing their jobs.
Fact is the Blacks had to be better, do better and not make mistakes. Many
times I made mistakes that a Black worker would have been fired for...and
yet because I was white nothing happened to me. I’ve seen it happen a
lot that a Black would get fired for doing the same exact thing that a white
courier was getting away with and management knew it.
Gary, “ didn’t it make Blacks feel
inferior when they repeatedly saw their white co- workers get better grades and
promotions? They were doing their best
yet it seems they always came up as being not as good as the whites.
AL, “ yeah...I guess it did but that
wasn’t the intention. It was just
Fedex’s way to keep Blacks out of management. And it made it easier to
fire them of course...but also I think
it was just thought of as a way to keep them ( Blacks ) in line. In the
colonial days they used a whip to keep Blacks in line...at Fedex they used a
‘pen’ like a whip. It was a way to keep them in line...letters in your
file, every little thing that might be used to keep them out of management or
to fire them. The pen was the modern day whip”.
Gary, “ funny you brought that up...doesn’t
Fred Smith the founder and CEO of Fedex live on a plantation that has slave
quarters on it”?
AL, “ yeah I read that and others
have told me that too”.
Gary, “ but doesn’t Fedex have a
Black man as a top personnel guy?” Wouldn’t he look after the welfare of his
fellow Blacks? Make sure they are
treated fairly?
AL, “ I have no idea what he’s up
to. But I do know that within the company many times he’s referred to as
‘Fred’s House Nigger’ and he was there so that Fedex wouldn’t have to fear the
Blacks because they had one in a key position in personnel. Believe me, he’s no
Reverend Jesse Jackson. I honestly
don’t believe he cares one bit about the Blacks. He’s right there in
Memphis and that’s where the discrimination lawsuit is. So what’s he doing to
help his fellow Blacks?
Gary, “ so what you’re saying is
that he was just a Black man bought off by a rich white man”?
AL, “ that’s exactly what I’m
saying...he was bought off. They’re paying him good money”.
Gary, “ Al as a former member of
Fedex management and having worked there for sixteen years, what do you think
Fedex will do after they find out about this interview”?
AL, “ I guess like they do about
everyone who tells the truth on them. First thing they’ll say is that I’m a
disgruntled former employee, as some others will think too. Then they’ll try to
sue me and or you. The threats will come as you have already found out. Maybe
they’ll bring out a few loyal company Blacks and parade them around so they can
say what a great company Fedex is. How they have helped so many Blacks. Fedex
does have a very powerful public relations firm. In years past a lot of
people believed them. But today more and more people and employees are
beginning to see the truth. And the truth is Fedex treats Blacks
terribly...about what you would normally expect from a southern white
plantation owner. For so many years Black workers at Fedex have poured their
hearts and souls into Fedex and white
management has always screwed them , called them names, told jokes about them
behind their backs and not only about them but also their wives and children.
They even make fun of Blacks in management, all Blacks but even more so if they
were dark Black...the darker a Black was the less human he was ... white
management actually thought of and treated
Blacks as ‘less than human’.
God... it was despicable...it made me sick to my stomach. I only wish I
had had more courage to speak up before.
So let Fedex bitch...let them sue
me. I’ve told the truth. Hopefully I will be able to go to my grave with
one less burden on my soul. One less feeling of guilt.
Gary, “ Al, did you ever come to
realize that many of the same Blacks that were discriminated against and
screwed by white Fedex management , were denied jobs because they were Black,
were called niggers and worse, were made fun of and thought of as less than human.......were the same Blacks that
went to war for America, that some were wounded perhaps crippled, that some put their lives on the line for
America while serving our country”?
Only to come back and be treated as less than human by racist white
Fedex management?
AL, “ yes I realize it...and it’s
not right”.
Gary, “ Al as a former member of
Fedex management...what would you say to a Black employee of Fedex if a white manager came up to him and
started talking about Basketball, Boxing, or Football”?
AL, “ I would tell the Black
Fedex employee... not to trust that white manager. Because, chances are, that
manager is just trying to ‘ Bullshit the Black so he can Fuck him. I would bet
the white manager is BB&F’ing the Black worker. I would tell him...just
remember they are NEVER your friends, NEVER. And never trust them.
The
Book...
This
book is about my experiences as a courier for Federal Express ( which in this
book will be referred to as FEDEX ). Much of what is in this book I have seen
and experienced first hand. Some is
from talking to other Fedex employees and former employees. Other information was gathered from Fedex
customers, the FBI, the AFOSI ( Air
Force Office of Special Investigations ),
and also a number of other
government offices. And a variety of
other sources. Even today I
regularly talk to Fedex employees all across America and they tell me about the
many wrongs by Fedex management and about the many thefts and drugs within the
company.
While it is expected that in any work place there would be some degree
of non truth, drug abuse and theft,
never in my life would I have ever expected the amount of Racism, Lying,
Stealing and Drug Abuse as I found at
Fedex. Not only among the couriers but
also within management. Many times, I had to secretly tape record conversations
with others so that they wouldn’t LIE
about events later on.
Some will ask...why am I
writing this book? There are a lot
of reasons. One is that I feel certain now that Fedex management conspired to
defraud the military and other government branches, the business sector and the
America people. And there are so many other lies that Fedex has told. This book
is an attempt to tell...the “TRUTH” about Fedex. I realize that with Fedex spending millions annually on
advertisements that I will have a very difficult time getting people to
believe the “REAL TRUTH”.
The BIBLE tells us Jesus Christ
had a similar problem... perhaps this book will help
Something which I would really like to know is.... How can hundreds perhaps
thousands of Fedex employees all across America not only DEFRAUD but
actually BETRAY America and
compromise the security of classified Military shipments and the safety of it’s brave
servicemen? That’s exactly what they
have done. Not once but thousands of times week after week, month
after month and year after year. I
believe Fedex would still be betraying and cheating America out of millions if
not billions of dollars today, if it weren’t for one... “honest courier.”
And what happened to those couriers and Fedex management when the
truth was told? Fred Smith and Fedex
didn’t have the honesty or decency to come forward and say... “yes we did
something terribly bad, we knew it and were wrong to do it... and here’s all of your money back America?” “We are very sorry for betraying America
because we are greedy and have no morals.”
Instead Fedex tried to intimidate
and coerce an honest family man when they threatened to put him, his wife and
his two small children out in the
street because he dared to tell the truth. Dared to stop crimes against his
country. The one man who felt it was
wrong to betray America and it’s servicemen and tried to stop it. Also, why did those Fedex employees harass
and threaten to KILL the one man in ALL the company that stood up and
said, “that’s enough Federal Express, stop Betraying and Cheating America, it’s brave soldiers and it’s
people”.
NOTE Since I exposed the Fraud , Theft and
Drugs within Federal Express they have
decided to change their name to FEDEX.
Please realize that Fedex and Federal Express are the same company with
the same CEO. A different name, but
still the same despicable company that cheated America and betrayed it
soldiers.
Contents of Book...
(1) What I have learned about Fred Smith.
How and when he forged the signature of another man and lied to get millions of
dollars. And how he was indicted for it. That while driving without a
license he hit and killed a Black man. He left the Black man to die in the
street like an animal. (would he have stopped if he were white?)
(2) How
couriers and managers go through Federal Express shipments for illegal drugs
and other valuables to steal. ( documented by tape recording )
(3)
How another courier taught me to “feel”
Courier pak Envelopes and Overnight letters for drugs and valuables ( to steal ) on my first day at
work.
(4)
I was taught by my manager to cheat customers by lying about the weight
of a shipment so that the customer would be charged extra money. ( REVENUE )
(5) Read how “druggie thieving couriers”
nearly get an innocent courier killed by Mafia connected drug dealer.
(6) Fedex courier Helen Wilson told of her
“first” performance review with her manager. While making deliveries she
told him she was getting ready to deliver a drug shipment. Helen said her
manager ripped open the package and
stole most of the “POT” and told her to deliver the rest to the drug
dealer. Then they drove to her place and got a pipe and stayed stoned while doing deliveries. She was pissed...she
said she only got a 4.0 and that she should have gotten a 7.0 for stealing
drugs with her manager. She bragged of stealing many illegal drugs from Fedex
shipments.
* At the time of this writing Helen is still a courier for
Fedex.
7) Read how “anyone” can ship illegal drugs through Fedex safely.
(8) Read how anyone can ship through Fedex
for free and not get caught.
(9) How the FBI asked me to help them find a
$100,000 gold shipment that they said was stolen by someone at Federal Express. Shipped by Bank of Delaware for
Sachs.
(10) How Black couriers were given “smiles”
to their faces. But when they weren’t around they were called “Nigger’s and
Monkeys and more” . ( on Tape )
(11) How Fedex Senior Station Manager
Stephanie Seberg of the
Wilmington, Delaware station had to be
put under bodyguard protection to keep her alive. She was receiving death
threats from within the station. Threats so serious that Liberty District
Director Julio Colombo had to call in his BEST investigators and
other Management personnel. Read how COLOMBO’S men BEGGED ME to help
them save Stephanie Seberg. I told them how to save her life...they wouldn’t do
it ...so Stephanie fled the job, fled the state, fled the region,
ran for her life.
(
were illegal drugs and thefts involved ?)
(12)
The big CSS rip-off. I was
repeatedly told by management and courier alike to defraud and betray the U.S.
Military and America. I collected what
evidence I could, then I went to the Military to stop it. ( REAL documents
which actually show Fedex committing fraud against the United States
Military ).
(13)
You will see documents never before seen by the public
detailing Fedex’s suspension and other
investigations of CSS violations.
(14) You will see a report from the Air
Force Office of Special Investigations Department of Defense detailing 100% violation of eight separate nationwide investigations
of Fedex’s CSS service. (documented).
(15) A key document which shows that
Fedex was lying to their customers
civilian and military, about the phony CSS service as far back as 1986 and
before. One document that Fedex
doesn’t want anyone to see.
(16) Many, many complaints ( government,
military, and civilian ) about the phony CSS service. Stolen and tampered with
CSS shipments too. ( documented )
(17) Learn how Fedex “Lied” to the
Department of Defense Inspectors General (DOD/IG) attorney for the Office of
Special Investigations about important evidence (documents) it was subpoenaed
to supply. And how it was “caught in
that lie”. (documented) and learn why
they lied about documents. ( hiding the DD1907’s)
(18) General John Stanford... The
commander of the Military Traffic Management Command. He was supposed to be protecting Americas classified military
shipments and safeguarding their security. Yet a Fedex memo said he was
“their ally” ( documented). Did he quash an Air Force Office of Special
Investigations report which documented 100% contract violations by Fedex
nationwide? Who’s side was he really on
and did he illegally help Fedex with their military contracts or bids?
There is just too much to list here
but the book will be filled with personal accounts and documents which may
change the way you look at Fedex forever.
I would like to explain now as will soon become apparent, that I am not
a professional writer. So as you read my book, if you should come across a
grammatical error or a misspelled word , please try to remember it is not that
of a professional writer, but rather that of an “Honest Family Man” trying to
get the “TRUTH OUT” as best that he can about a company that is so corrupt and
unscrupulous that that they have been awarded the title...”Rottenest Most
UN-American Company in America”
. Just recently I have begun to receive requests for my book through
Literary Agents and hopefully soon it will be in a more formal and professional
manner. And in a bookstore near you.
Thank You
AND ANOTHER UPDATE.....
IN April, of 2000 the DEA ( Drug Enforcement Agency )
made a major BUST of many Fedex employees and management. It seems FEDEX
EMPLOYEES had a MAJOR NATIONWIDE
DRUG DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM in
place and were shipping millions (if not billions ) of dollars of drugs across
America. RIGHT INTO OUR NEIGHBORHOODS AND INTO THE HANDS and BODIES OF OUR
CHILDREN. I don’t believe the DEA got
even one ten thousandth of the Illegal Drugs delivered by Fedex couriers every
day. KEEP FEDEX COURIERS OUT OF YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD THEY DELIVER ILLEGAL DRUGS TO
OUR CHILDREN.
IF
NOT BUSTED BY THE DEA ...IN ONLY ONE OPERATION
FEDEX WOULD HAVE BROUGHT INTO OUR NEIGHBORHOODS TO OUR CHILDREN
170
TONS OF MARIJUANA JUST TO THE
EAST COAST
140 MILLION DOLLARS IN VALUE
MANY FEDEX EMPLOYEES ( HOW
MANY IN MANAGEMENT ? )
FEDEX WAS A DISTRIBUTION NETWORK
4000 SHIPMENTS OF DRUGS IN JUST THIS
BUST
REVENUE
TO FEDEX ...IF SHIPMENTS WERE PAID FOR...$500,000.00
While working at the FEDEX
Philadelphia Airport I was told and soon realized that Fedex employees were flying on Fedex
airplanes to meet up with drug dealers. and buying illegal drugs. By flying on
Fedex airplanes they knew they could travel from city to city all across
America with no fear of being caught by DEA or airport security
personnel. So if you did read or hear about the major nationwide DRUG bust of
Fedex employees ...realize this, the very next business day Fedex couriers were
still delivering Illegal Drugs into YOUR neighborhood.
It was my first day at Federal
Express and I was looking forward to starting work with a big new company. I
had been told that it was a good place to work and the pay and benefits were
okay. My wife had just given birth to a
son and we looked forward to the security that a big company would provide.
I had met my new supervisor and he seemed nice enough. It
was early afternoon
and he had asked me to wait
outside the office in the freight area while he was taking
care of something. So I
wandered around in the building where they parked the trucks
and handled all the incoming
and out going freight. There was a courier there and he was
doing something with the
freight in his van. Usually the day drivers went
out in the morning and spent
the mornings delivering freight and the afternoons picking
up packages that would be
driven to the airport later that night. While the evening drivers
were usually part timers that
mostly did pickups, new guys like me , that worked their
way unto the daytime routes
as they became available.
I walked over to
a courier and introduced myself , " hi", I
said " my name is Gary
and I'm starting here today".
"Hi , I'm Tony,
how 're you doing" ?
"Good"
I replied , "how is it here
?
"Not bad , well at times it's not too bad, but
sometimes you have to be careful" .
"There's a lot of funny
stuff that goes on here ".
"What do you mean " I asked.
He looked around the station as if to see who was
watching or who might be there.
. "Well", he said , "lots of guys here will
steal your shit , and you have to be careful”.
"They 'll go right into
you're truck and take it if it's something they want or take it off the
belt before it gets to
you, you just have to be careful ,
always", he said.
"What do you mean , steal what", I asked , not
sure exactly what he was talking about.
"You know , your packages , jewelry ,money , drugs,
anything that they want", he
said as he looked around the
building. "man you have to watch your stuff all the time ,
these guys will steal
anything not nailed down".
"But I don't do drugs”, I stated, not really sure if
this was a trick test or some kind
of setup the company used to
check on their new employees before they sent them on the
road.
"I mean the drugs in your shipments , there's always
a lot of drugs in the
shipments and these guy take
them or part of the drugs and deliver
the rest, that way the
shipments keep on coming
in". "You'll learn once
you're here for awhile, Federal ships a
lot of illegal drugs, an
awful lot”.
"Wow I never
thought of that" , I said,
"don't they call in the cops ?"
"Not very often, most times the guys just take them
for themselves", he replied ,
"it pretty rare that
they turn in what they find. Want me to teach you how to feel
packages ", he asked.
"What do you mean", I asked , I had just
completed two weeks of courier school
training and no one had ever
mentioned (feeling a package).
"You know, feel a package to see what's
inside", Tony said as a matter of fact.
“Once you get good at it you
can almost always tell what's inside. You know like if it's a
overnight letter or a courier
pak envelope you just feel it and see
if it's money or
jewelry or if it feels like
drugs. Lots of times you can tell and you just open up the
package and take it. Lots of
people do it , you can get some neat
stuff that way".
"You mean , that you can tell what a package has in
it just by feeling it", I asked ,
not quite sure what to make
of this conversation.
"Oh yeah , look", he said as he took out his wallet and put it in a courier perk
envelope and sealed it
," now feel this letter , you know what a wallet feels like , could
this be a wallet “, he asked.
"Well yes," I said , "it does feel like a
wallet now that you think about it", but
what if it's not ?"
"No problem , you just put it in another Courier pak
and send it on it's way,
nobody knows and nobody
cares", he replied. "Look man everybody does it , a lot of the
guys do and some of the girls here too". "And you can
usually tell if it's money or
drugs too , it's easy after
awhile. "I've seen some real nice jewelry come out of the
freight ".
I looked at him and I realized he was probably telling
the truth, I also felt that he
too may be one of the guys
stealing the freight , he had an awful lot of knowledge about
it . Just about then my new
manager came out of the office and called me over to him.
He looked at me and said, "let's go check out a van
and go on a safety training
ride so you can start your
new adventure with Federal Express”.
"Great ",
I said, anxious to get started and at the same time I felt a little
uneasy.
The feeling passed after
awhile . But as I look back , my first feeling and thoughts , that
maybe this isn't such a great
company after all were a lot truer than I would ever have
imagined.
LESSON ...A LOT OF FEDERAL EXPRESS
COURIERS FEEL PACKAGES AND STEAL VALUABLES FROM SHIPMENTS. SOMETIMES MONEY AND
JEWELRY AND SOMETIMES ILLEGAL DRUGS....
The next night I reported to work I was sent out with
another courier. His route
was the one I would be taking
over. He was moving down to day shift to do deliveries.
His name was Tom Anglin a
straight king of guy. He was very serious about his job and
he did it well. The route
covered an area in the south and
northeast section of
Wilmington and slightly above
it running all the way to the Delaware River. The route
consisted
of private residences , businesses ,
and even a factory or two.
During the evening we were given a
pickup to do in the lower part of Wilmington. As we pulled up to the address
there was a group of blacks standing on
the corner and they looked at the van. Tom told me to just stay with the van as
he went to do the pickup. Soon he came back without incident and put the
shipment in the back of the van. As we drove away he glanced at the people on
the street and said how stupid the niggers were. That when they saw “Federal “
on the van they thought it only delivered welfare checks. “Niggers are stupid
and always will be”, he stated, “that’s why they’ll never get anywhere”. He
went on to state how lazy they were and how they were always stealing , that’s
why you had to always watch your van real close when they were around. I asked
him if that was why they sent in a truck with two men in it tonight and he laughed.
“No”, he replied, “ Federal wouldn’t pay two couriers to a do a single pickup
no matter how many niggers were on the street”.
After we returned to the station that night I helped the
others get the freight ready
for the trip up to the
Philadelphia ramp. That's where the planes were that would fly the
freight down to Memphis , to
be sorted.
At about 9:30pm I left the station and walked to my van
which was parked
inside a fenced area . I
started it then pulled out onto the roadway to go home. The wind
was coming into the truck on
the passenger side. Funny, I didn't remember leaving the
window down. No I couldn't
have, I had locked the doors when I got out , so the windows
must have been up. When I looked over I saw where the wind was
coming from.
Someone had broken my window.
I looked under my seat to check for my radar detector
and sure enough it was gone.
Some first night out on a route I remember thinking. Who
could have broke my window
and taken my radar detector? There was
no one in the area
but my co-workers, surely
they wouldn't steal from a fellow employee. Or so I thought.
The next day I asked a few guys in the station if they
had any ideas of who might
have done it. A few guys
said it was a bummer and that I had to be careful. One courier
just smiled at me and said it
was probably just one of the guys saying, "welcome new
guy". I asked him if he honestly thought it was a
courier that broke my window and stole
my radar detector and he
replied that yes , probably it was. It was nothing new, that lots
of stuff was stolen from the
parking lot.
LESSON........NEVER,
REALLY TRUST A FEDERAL EXPRESS COURIER.
It wasn't long before I was running my own route with the
other evening couriers,
going out on the run around
3:30 PM and returning around 7:30 PM .
Then I would help
sort the freight with the
other drivers and get it ready for the trip to the Philadelphia
airport which was about 20
miles away. From there it would be
flown to Memphis for
resorting and then flown back out to the airport of
the state where it was going to be
delivered.
I had learned a lot in just a few months and felt
comfortable on my route but there
were just too many things
going on for me to relax completely.
It seems that there was always a lot of talk about DRUGS.
Mostly about
COCAINE and POT going on , not only in the station but also
on the 2way radios we
carried in our vans .
Sometimes I had to wait for the other
couriers to finish making a
drug deal or just to finish
talking about some they had tried or were going to get and try.
And since most of them were
daytime couriers with a lot more time and connections than
me , I felt it was better
that I just wait for the radio to clear. As I didn't want to jeopardize
my job or my health over a
pickup. It was bad enough that I had to constantly check my
truck for leftover drugs or
drugs paraphernalia .
Often , when I did a pretrip check on the truck I was
going to be driving that night
I would find leftover joints
or empty bags from cocaine or speed.
And sometimes there
were whole joints and the
bags were not empty at all and that really scared me as I didn't
know what to do with them. On
the one hand I didn't want to piss off the courier who left
it there if I threw the stuff
away, and on the other I knew I couldn't go to management
in the station as several of
them had already told me that they got high and it was okay
For all I knew I could soon
be out of a job . So most times I just put it in the truck in the
box where I kept the P1stickers so the owners would eventually
find it the next day .
Hopefully before they got off
their shift and came looking for me.
LESSON....ALWAYS CHECK YOUR FEDEX VAN FOR ILLEGAL DRUGS
Another thing
that bothered me in the beginning , after I had figured out what
was going on, was that
sometimes when I got into a truck to do a pretrip , there would be
a number of empty overnight
letters or courier paks ( the two pound envelopes) in the
small trash cans we kept in
the trucks. Sometimes when I got into a truck there would be
a half dozen or more opened
and empty with just the clear plastic envelope stuck to the
side and a three letter
designation code written on it. sometimes it was our (ILG) three
letter code meaning it had
come to our station from someplace else or another three letter
code meaning it was going to
another station. When I first saw it I didn't think too much
about it , but then one day
it dawned on me that the couriers were going into the
shipments for the contents. I
realized what was happening one day as I was leaving my
station on my route and was
both scared and mad , thinking that I might get blamed for
stealing from the packages .
But as I continued on my route and into the evening
I settled down and figured
that even if I did get blamed for it I would demand a polygraph
test, both for me and the
last courier to use the truck. Later on I realized just how stupid
that idea was. Still I tried
to get rid of the opened packages when I did my pretrip as best
as I could. Like I said
"I never could really relax"
not as a courier for Federal Express.
I
later learned that the United Parcel Service ( UPS ) has a separate group of
people that load the trucks for the drivers that deliver the packages. These
are people that come into the UPS terminals “empty handed” and when they leave
they have to walk out to their personal vehicles so there is less chance to
steal shipments. And at UPS the freight isn’t loaded by the drivers so the
drivers can’t steal someone else’s freight.
While, at Federal Express the couriers stood by the conveyor belt when
the truck is unloaded and “grab” the freight as it comes down the belt and
throw it into their truck. So if for
instance I was the third guy from the truck on the belt and standing at the back
door of my truck ( the trucks are backed up to the conveyor belt ) and I saw a TV or a computer coming down the
conveyor belt and it was supposed to be going to truck number ten which is
further on down the belt. I could grab the TV, computer, jewelry etc. and no
one would know it. Then drive out of the station with it and no one would
know. Because the driver of truck
number ten has no way of knowing what
shipments he has coming in that day. And most times no one has any idea what
shipments a courier puts into his truck that morning. A lot of times I have
grabbed shipments and put them into another couriers truck as a favor. And many
times someone else has put shipments into mine for me to deliver without my
knowledge of who put them there.
One Christmas season when some of us
were talking about getting our Christmas shopping finished with all the extra
deliveries coming in at Christmas time and many of us being so busy. One
courier bragged ... “hey , I do my best
shopping right here on the belt ...the prices are great and it saves time, why go anywhere else”?. And I’m sure he
wasn’t the only courier doing it.
After I was there a short while , one of the managers
asked me if I would drive the
freight to the ramp at the
Philadelphia airport and help them load the planes. I was
still part time and
needed the money and I said yes. In time I found out that it was fun
working at the ramp and
meeting other couriers from the other stations. They would
come from Philadelphia of
course and New Jersey and it seems like I even saw a couple
of guys from Maryland hauling
two day freight. It’s what we call P2 freight. And even
though loading the planes was
a lot of work it was kind of fun too. What surprised me
most though was that you
could buy almost anything there , it
was almost like an open
drug market. That is, if they
trusted you . At first they seemed like just a bunch of regular
guys and they are to some
extent . But after they felt comfortable with me , some of them
started asking me if I got
high or did I get any good stuff today
(meaning drugs ) and
most times I just replied
that, "no not today , but you guys
know the day time guys get all
the good stuff". Lots of
times I was offered free pot but told that if I wanted
cocaine
I had to buy it as it costs too much. ( I didn’t do drugs ) And I can't even
count how many times someone tried to
sell me a watch or a radar detector "fresh off the belt" they would
say , meaning the conveyor belt where the freight was loaded and unloaded
. I was also offered TV's , computers, and lots and lots of
jewelry , almost anything you could put in a box or wrap paper around. I even
saw couriers stealing the freight at the airport and slipping away with it ,
and no I didn't say anything to management about it . After all who could I trust and besides just one word and
I would never come back to the ramp again. I used the old , I don't see
nothing, hear nothing, know nothing approach . What I saw had been going on long before I got there
and I was sure it would continue long after I left.
LESSON.... THE FEDERAL
EXPRESS RAMP IN PHILADELPHIA WAS A GOOD
MEETING PLACE FOR DRUGGIE
COURIERS, AND THIEVES.
Sometimes after I left the airport and returned to the
station I would find several
of the other couriers hanging
around the station . Some might be playing ping pong
while others were just
hanging out. Often I would think to myself, "don't these guys have
a life”, to be hanging around
your work place hours after you 'you've gotten off work
seemed pretty dumb to me.
After I parked my truck , I would do my paperwork
while we all hung around the
ping pong table. There was always a lot of joking going on
and the guys seemed to be in
a GREAT mood.
A couple of times after I returned to the station I
thought that I had smelled
marijuana but wasn't sure .
Several of my co- workers on the
evening shift had already
told me that they got high
and had even offered to "hook- up" with me while we were
doing pickups so we could get high together. I didn’t do
drugs so I usually just told them
that I was too busy and maybe
next time. Other times I would say that pot got me too
messed up and I wouldn't be
able to keep track of my pick ups. So smelling pot in the
station didn't really
surprise me, but I do think that it surprised me that they were so
blatant about it. After a
while, probably when they felt safe with me they would light up
the joints right in front of
me and several times I witnessed them snorting a white powder
which one courier said was
some "damn good coke, the best" he bragged. " And I can get
you
a really good count if you want some, any thing you want , I can get it and
I'll guarantee the count”.
I just replied that I would keep that in mind . Which
seemed to satisfy him that I
was sufficiently impressed
and would be a future customer.
It had been about three months now since I hired on as a
courier and a job
evaluation was do. They call
it a check ride and a manager rides
with you on your route
to see how well you do your
job. Then he gives you a rating by using the numbers (1)
through (6) in several
different categories. ( the rating now
goes to seven )
The first manager I had was out on disability ( so we
were told ) and I had been
assigned a new one. He was a
short balding guy with thick glasses and a big smile. Colin
Baines was his name and he
lived in north Wilmington.
Before we left the station he had asked me if I had
checked the van to be sure all
the necessary supplies were
in it so that I wouldn't run out that evening. And as we started
out of the station he asked
me if I knew where my first stop was. To which I replied yes
and we proceeded to it. I had
worked hard to learn my route and be a good courier and
dealing with the customers
came easy. As we rode along my route my manager began to
open up about his employment
with Federal Express and his family. His wife had just
given birth to their first
child and he was as proud as could be. And it just so happened
that his house was located
within my route. Maybe if we had time we could stop by his
house and do a joint he
said.
"You do get high don't you Gary" he asked after he made that statement. I
wanted
to say "not really"
, but what the hell, he was my supervisor and I didn't want to say
anything that he didn't like,
at least not while he was doing my evaluation and besides I
was new there and didn't want
to rock the boat. So I just said
something like, “ I'm
usually too busy on my route
to ".
"Well we'll see how busy we are tonight, maybe we'll
have time to stop by my
house for a few
minutes", he said.
And fortunately, we were busy that night, at least too
busy to stop by his house
and get high. Thank God.
We were almost halfway into my shift and were at a
private residence. The
customer , an older woman was shipping a small box about the
size of a shoe box. It
weighed about one pound maybe
a little over but less than two pounds for sure. "Did you
weigh the box ma’am ," I
asked.
"No" she replied, "how much do you think
it weighs"?
I picked up the box and held it for a moment trying to be
as accurate a possible.
When you handle a lot of
small packages as a courier does , you get to be pretty good.
Probably like a butcher
weighing meats in the grocery store.
"About one pound to one
and a half " I replied. "I'll have to charge you for two pounds
".
"I thought about a pound" she said ,"but
if you say more I'll pay it"
"Well I
think it is a little over a pound , but if you have a scale we can weigh
it" I
said as I started to write up
the airbill. And she responded that she would accept my
estimate.
After we left her house and were putting the package in
the back door of the van I
handed Colin the small box
and asked him how much he thought it weighed. He held it
for a moment and replied that
yes it was about a pound and a half,. "But you could have
told her it was over three
pounds and she would have to pay for four,” Colin said.
"But Colin, it wasn't even two pounds " I
responded .
"It doesn't matter what it weighs, it how much you
can get." "If you told her that it
weighed four pounds and she
paid it , that would have been more money that Federal
Express made and the more Federal makes ... the more we get in bonuses."
"Got it " he asked ," remember revenue...
bring in all the money you can every time".
"Yeah I got it," I said.
LESSON ...IF YOU ARE A COURIER FOR FEDERAL EXPRESS.....
CHEAT
THE CUSTOMER FOR EVERY PENNY
YOU CAN. YOU MAY GET A BIGGER
BONUS.
It was becoming clearer everyday, put up a good front
then steal and cheat all you
can. I had worked for
companies before where I had disagreed with some of the ways that
they did things, but never
anything like this. At least the management in those companies
thought they were doing what
was right and for the right reasons, they at least had some
integrity. But at Federal
Express it seemed like they thought
everybody was fair game
and Federal Express was the
'great white hunter '.
I got a dispatch to go to Mercantile Press a printing
company on Bellevue avenue
in Wilmington, it was a
pickup that I did about once a week when they called. They were
friendly there and you could
tell they were very particular about their work. It was a good
stop because they always had
their packages and paperwork done correctly and it was
ready to go when I got there.
But tonight along with their usual shipments they had a
CSS shipment for me. I
had never handled a CSS
package before, but while I was in courier school we had gone
over how they were to be
processed and handled. At that time I had thought that I had
heard the instructor wrong.
It seemed like we were told two different ways of how they
were handled and since the
second way contradicted the first I had assumed that I had
heard wrong the second time.
Because the second time I was told that CSS shipments
were to be handled no
different then P1 freight. Tonight I would learn from my manager
that I had heard the
instructor correctly both times .
One way was the way you told the
customers you would handle
they’re CSS shipments and the second way was how you
really would do it.
The owner of Mercantile Press came over to me and after saying hi to both of us,
asked me about the handling
of the CSS ( Constant Surveillance Service ) package. He
wanted to know if every
person who had possession of the package would be signing for
it and would it be attended
or locked up at all times as the girl on the phone had told him.
I knew what the manual said about the proper handling of
a CSS shipment
and I assured him it would be
.
He said that he
had complained to our sales people about our couriers losing his shipments and
they had suggested that he use our CSS service. He asked me to explain
exactly how a CSS shipment
was handled differently from a Priority 1 shipment.
My manager was
standing right next to me and I knew I had to get it right the
first time as there is a
section in my evaluation that deals with product knowledge. So I
didn't want to screw up.
"Well" I started , after I fill out the airbill , I sign this CSS tally
record to show
that I have possession of it and what time it is. I'm
not allowed to let it out of my sight
and unsecured so when I leave
here I have to take the package directly back to my
station, because I have more
stops on my route, and give it to a customer service agent
(
we didn’t have a CSS custodian at the station ) or someone else. And that
person will sign the CSS tally sheet to show that they have taken possession of
it. That person in the station will lock it in a secure area to maintain it's
security. Then tonight a courier will
sign for the package and take it directly to the airport where he will give it
to a CSS person there that will sign for the package and then place it in a
secure area until it's flight to Memphis for sorting. When it gets to the
airport in the city where it's going , a CSS
driver will sign for it before taking it to the station from where it is
going to be delivered . Once it arrives at the station , the courier that will
be delivering it has to sign for it before he takes it and delivers it. And
finally, the person who receives the package must sign for it. So you see,
every person who has possession of that package has to sign a CSS tally sheet
when they receive the package. And that person has to keep the package secure
in his sight or locked in a secure area."
"Okay" he said ,"please don't lose this
one , it's important", and he turned and
walked away.
"Well, how did I do with the CSS ", I asked,
hoping I had said what I was
supposed to.
"You did fine", Colin replied , "you
answer was perfect".
After I finished filling out the other airbills we went
out back to my van. I put the
packages in the back of the
van and started coding them for the cities to which they
would be going.
"Do you know where your next stop is Gary",
Colin asked, trying to keep me on track.
"Sure I do , I replied, "back to the
station to drop off this CSS
package".
"No , your next stop is up the road to your next
customer" he said.
"What about the CSS package ", I asked .
"Don't worry about it", he responded "just
handle it like a regular P1 shipment" .
"Then , what's the difference between a priority one
package and a CSS package,"
I asked.
"There is no difference between CSS and priority one shipments... well
about
{ 5 to 10 million dollars
extra for Fred's pockets} and when Fred's pockets are full , what
falls out ... we get in the way of profit sharing,” Colin
said.
I didn't take the CSS shipment back to the station like I
was supposed to that
night, nor any other time
that I picked up a CSS shipment.
Instead I continued on my
route
as I was instructed by my manager Colin Baines that night. And yes there were
many times that the CSS package’s were
left unsecured and unprotected. In time I would learn that tens of thousands of other CSS packages were left unsecured and unsigned
for with no real system of tracking who had handled these sometimes valuable
shipments. Many were sensitive classified military shipments and were important
to our military’s defense.
These so called and CSS shipments were handled with
almost no
difference than common
freight. Yet Federal was telling it's customers that it was
providing a “special
security” and signature service which didn't exist , and were making
millions of dollars from it. It’s
not an opinion or a belief, not even a claim, it is just
pure fact.
Fedex management conspired to commit fraud against all of America.
Many of the
customers included the government and
the U.S. military .
They were defrauding
their customers and betraying America.
They knew what they
were doing and for all I knew
they were laughing there asses off about it. They had found
thousands of customers who
would pay them millions of dollars for a service that didn't
exist. And hundreds if not
thousands of Federal Express employees
were in on the
conspiracy.
We finished up my route about the regular time and
returned to the station . After
I backed up to the conveyor
belt to unload my freight we got out of the van and walked to
the back of the van.
"Who do I give the CSS shipment to ", I asked
Colin.
"Just throw it on the belt with the rest of the
freight", he replied .
I did just as I
was told. Later that night after
helping load the trucks for the
run up to the airport, a
courier took it to the ramp and didn’t even know it was there and
just threw
it on the conveyor belt at the airport ramp along with the other common
freight
.
And no, he didn't sign for the CSS shipment and no one
else at the ramp signed
for it before he threw it on
the belt either. He could have given it to someone along the
road or even sold it to
someone if it had been valuables or money
or maybe gold. And
who would have known that he
didn't take it to the ramp. Who would even
have known that he had it in
the first place.
LESSON....IF YOU DON’T GET HIGH WITH YOUR MANAGER... AT
LEAST
LEARN HOW TO DEFRAUD THE CUSTOMER and BETRAY
AMERICA.
FEDERAL EXPRESS MANAGEMENT AND COURIERS WERE INVOLVED
IN NATIONWIDE CONSPIRACY OF
FRAUD.
In the months that followed I would drive many CSS shipments to the
airport in Philadelphia and
most times (unless I found out by
accident) I wouldn't even
know that I was carrying them
on my truck, because certainly no one
ever took the time
to tell me or have me sign
off on the signature sheet as I was supposed to.
We got on a new courier, he was from Louisiana he said.
He also had a brother
that worked for Federal he
told me. He was a black guy named Ted Autry and he also
drove the CTV ( tractor
trailer ) up to the Philadelphia ramp
at the end of the night . He
used to be a courier in
Louisiana according to him but I was never sure why he
transferred up north and he
never said.
He was a quick
learner and it didn't take him long to learn his new route. He was
also a very fast driver, at times too fast . At least I thought so.
He also seemed to be high all the time. But I always felt
that was a plus at our
station.
And he did seem to get along well with the other couriers when he was in their
presence, but when he wasn’t around and his name came up , they referred to him
as “that nigger from Jersey” and made racial remarks about him .While always
being nice to him in person. It wasn’t unusual , I had seen it many times at
Federal. There seemed to be an unspoken belief that blacks were hired for
appearance and quotas to make the company “look good” while in reality it
seemed they were considered never quite as good as a white courier or manager.
One manager told me that they wouldn’t let a black be a senior station manager
because ...who would be there to keep them in line? Senior Station Manager Mike
Mitchell had expressed his beliefs many times that there should always be a
white man over the blacks to keep them from fucking up.
He had made that statement one day
as he stopped to ask me how the evening route
was going. Several of the evening routes were getting busier and no
extra couriers were being hired to pick up the extra stops. And some of the
couriers were grumbling. Evidently it was getting back to him. I said something
to the effect that yes it was getting busy out there but as long as they (
management ) didn’t mind me getting back a little later I didn’t care, it only meant more hours for me. I did
say something about the cargo handler having a hard time keeping up with all
the freight coming in at the last minute.
That’s when Mike went into his
philosophy about blacks ( the cargo handler was black) and how they wanted the titles but couldn’t
do the job. He said that the cargo handler had been bugging him about a sales
position with the company and how he kept blowing him off. That even though he
(the cargo handler) had gone to college and was currently working in sales for
the “McCormick” spice company he would never be anything but a part time cargo
handler in “his station”. He said that
he would NEVER let a nigger in
management in “his station”. They were
too stupid and had no discipline he said. And he wasn’t going to put up with
it.
Evidently Mike was serious about his
beliefs because I later heard that the cargo handler did finally get a position
in sales with Federal Express but that he had to transfer out of the station
and I believe the state to get it. And I don’t believe he ever allowed a black
in management while he was in charge of the Wilmington station.
As a white man who grew up in a
mixed neighborhood I had learned that there were good and bad in all races. I
had played and fought with blacks ...and against them. They were people who had their good ways and their bad ways
... just like the whites.
Yet at Federal it seemed that many
times the white couriers could get away with a lot of stuff that the blacks in the station and even at
the Philadelphia Ramp couldn’t. It was
just some kind of unwritten rule. And who could the blacks complain to,
certainly not their white superior in the station. A complaint like that and
management could be looking at every single piece of paperwork that they
handled and every delivery and pickup.
I’ve had management watching my every step and it’s no fun.
I’ve worked at other major companies
and it seems that the blacks were treated much fairer by management and even
their white co-workers, but in the Federal Express stations where I worked it
definitely seemed like they weren’t treated equally or fairly.
Many
times they weren’t even thought of or considered to be human.
Ted’s route ran
next to mine and many times we would do pickups inside each
others routes. That's how I
came to know he drove too fast . And how I also found out
some of his other bad habits. The first time I saw
him getting high was about a month
after he came to work at our
station .
We were running routes in the same area and I happened to
see him pull off the
road . We always monitor our
radios and I hadn't heard him tell anyone that he was
having road problems yet he
was pulled off the side of the road where there was no
buildings and certainly no
pickups. So I pulled up behind his truck and walked up to his
door to make sure he was all
right. I asked him if he was alright.
But even as I asked, I realized what he was doing . He
had a joint in his hand and
the truck reeked of marijuana
smoke.
He just smiled and replied," want a hit man"?
I replied no thanks... and asked if he was okay.
He said he was fine and told me to go ahead that he would
catch up with me later.
I went back to my truck and headed to my next pickup. I
remember thinking
about how unfair it was that
I was running around like a wild man trying to do all my
stops and sometimes being
asked by dispatch to help Ted out and get a couple of his
stops for him.
And the truth of the matter
was probably that he was too stoned to get them himself. In
the coming months I would see
Ted getting high a lot. His van would be pulled off on the
side of the road or in a dark
parking area, a joint in his hand
with his radio blaring.
Sometimes I would hear him
making drug deals on the 2way radio with the other
couriers. And it was not
unusual to see a bag of pot in his possession when he got in the
CTV truck to drive it to the airport.
I was also a regular driver to the airport ramp now. It
seemed the other couriers
didn't want to be stuck with
having to drive up there every night after finishing their
route. I needed the money and
besides nothing was going on at that time of the night for
me anyway. I drove an IVECO
truck to the airport , it was German I think. A little bigger
than a van and awkward to
drive but it got the job done and that's all that counted.
At the ramp I would empty my truck onto the conveyor belt
and pull it out of the
way of the other incoming
trucks so they could get to the bay doors . Then I would either
help unload the other
incoming trucks or load the freight off the belt to the cans,( large
metal containers about the
size of a small storage shed ) along the conveyor belt. When
the cans got full they were
weighed and taken out to the plane and loaded . They were
then flown to Memphis where
the freight was resorted..
It was a hectic pace in which we worked but if everybody was working
together it was okay and
sometimes it seemed like fun. There were couriers coming in
from all the surrounding
stations and with their freight they brought great stories.
On some occasions I failed to see the humor though. Once,
just after I had helped
some of the guys pull a
couple of cans off a CTV truck from one of the Philadelphia
stations, I looked back to
see them looking at something . As I stood there one of them
made a comment and they all
began to laugh. Not sure just what it was they were looking
at but curious enough to want
to know , I walked back into the trailer and asked what was
so funny, "what did I
miss ", I asked.
"Show Gary ", one of them said , he'll get a
kick out of it. So the guy reached
into his pocket and pulled
out two Polaroid pictures of a nude girl and held them
out for me to see.
"Nice", I said, "one of your girlfriends?"
"Nah , just
one of my pickups", he replied.
"She sent four of them
to her husband, he’s in the marines, in
California".
He continued, "When I went to do the pickup, this
real nice looking girl answered
the door, she asked me three
times if anybody ever opened the Overnight Letters".
He said that he told her no one ever goes into Federal’s
mail. That's
why everybody uses us,
because their mail goes through every time and no one ever
messes with it. That's why so
many drug dealers use Federal Express.
At that everybody
busted out laughing, even I had to
chuckle at that.
He said she took
the overnight envelope into another room and put something in
it and had it sealed before
she brought it back to him. Then she even asked him again if
he was (sure) that no one
would open her mail and he told her no way.
After he left her place he pulled over and opened the
O.L. to see
what was in it. She had sent
her husband four pictures of herself (nude) and a letter
telling him how much she
missed him . And how she was going to make love to him
when he came home. She said
it all in her letter he said. So after he read the letter he
picked out the best two
pictures for himself and put the other two in another O.L. and
sent it to her husband , the
lucky bastard."
I looked at him standing there with a big smile on his
face and just couldn't hold
back. I didn't even think
about , it was wrong to go into someone else's mail . Here was a
soldiers wife sending him
something personal between the two of them. Hell the marine
could die tomorrow fighting
to save our asses and this clown who probably had never
even been in the service was
going through his mail . Mail that his wife had sent to him ,
she had trusted a courier who
promised her privacy and then betrayed her. He was a
bastard a real low life
bastard.
"Do you really think that was cool man, to go into
her mail? She was sending it to
her husband who was a
soldier, that's protecting your ass?"
They all looked at me like I had made a big deal out of
nothing. Like it was
nothing at all.
"All come on man", one of them said ,
"she'll never know".
"Yeah Gary, it's no big deal what's it going to
hurt?"
"It's not the point , stealing shit is one thing but
stealing a soldiers pictures of his
wife is pretty low. Don't you
guys have any friends or relatives in the service?"
None of them said anything more and soon we were all back
at work loading
freight into the cans. They
were still friendly with me, at least they said hi and made
small talk, but it seems like
I was left out of a lot of conversations after that. And if there
was a couple of guys in a
group talking , the talk seemed to change as I got close enough
to hear. At first I thought
that maybe I should have just looked at the pictures and kept
quiet but after awhile I just
took the attitude of 'so what it's no
big deal' either way there
was nothing I could do.
If I went to
management at the ramp the courier would just deny having any
pictures and the other guys
would stand behind him. Nothing would happen to him and I
would never be allowed to
work at the ramp. Oh I'm sure management wouldn't officially
tell me I couldn't , but it
would be made clear to me that I couldn't be trusted to keep
secrets. And word would get around that I squealed on
a co-worker and no one would want to work with me. Besides there were lots of
things happening at the ramp that I thought was wrong and if I went to management every time I saw someone doing something
wrong they would come after me for sure.
Also I was only getting four to five
hours an evening doing pickups and the additional four hours a night at the
ramp was needed to make forty hours a week which I needed to pay bills and
support my family.
There was a job posting on the
bulletin board. It was for a couple of back-up tractor trailer drivers for when
the regular driver went on vacation or was sick. Usually when a new position
comes open in the station anyone who is interested checks around to see who is
interested, and what their chances are to get it. Another courier had signed
the posting and after a week when no one else did I added my name.
I had a good bit of experience
driving trailers and still held my CDL license and knew that the two weeks of
schooling would be no problem. The other courier was a younger black guy who
had never driven a tractor trailer but wanted to give it a try.
His name was Anthony and he was a
very likeable guy. I had often heard
the
other
white couriers and management make fun of him and tell black jokes about him
and even his mother. I think he knew it
and was trying to gain some respect by becoming a truck driver. But the fact
is, he was BLACK and he would never think of him as equal or deserving no
matter how well he did his job.
We were told to report to the
Philadelphia Ramp at the airport to begin CDL classes. The instructor was an
older Italian guy by the name of Anthony and he told us to call him Tony. He had previously worked for Roadway
Trucking. There was also one other courier there for classes a woman. She was,
I think in her late twenties ( I never asked ) and she was out to prove she was
as good as any man. Fact is, she was pretty dammed good and gutsy as hell.
It was obvious right from the start
that Tony didn’t like Blacks, especially young Blacks with a “Catholic Italian”
name like ANTHONY.
Anthony (the courier) could tell right away. He asked me if I
thought Tony didn’t like him because his name was “ANTHONY” and he was Black, the same name as the
instructor who was Italian. While I
tried to assure him not to worry about it I explained to him that I probably
knew more about driving trucks then Tony and that I would make sure he got
through school okay.
It was obvious that Anthony felt the
dislike and hatred that Tony felt for him and I know it made him nervous to be
in a situation like that. But I knew I could get him through it, I had trained
others before.
It didn’t take Tony long to make his feelings about Blacks known to me. On
the first day when Anthony the courier wasn’t around Tony came over to me and
asked... “don’t you have any other white guys at your station who want to drive
a truck?”
Then
he went into a tirade about how “Niggers” can’t drive as good as whites and how
he didn’t like training them or even being around them didn‘t like the smell of
niggers. He especially didn’t like having to train a young black ( he called him a young buck nigger )
who had an “Italian Catholic” name like him. He said that he would make it as
difficult for Anthony as possible. Then he walked away grumbling some about
...“dammed niggers”.
I knew Anthony (the courier) would
have a tough time making it through schooling. I also knew I would make sure he
did...unless Tony made it so hard on him that he quit.
There were classes with text books
and also driving instruction. I had been around tractor trailers for many years
so most of it was old hat to me and several times I showed Tony that what he
was teaching wasn’t correct. And after arguing with me for a few minutes even
he had to admit that on those occasions it was I who knew more. But there were
times when I saw that Anthony didn’t understand what Tony was saying and was
too embarrassed to ask questions. When
I saw that I would ask Tony to go over it again so that we “ALL” understood. It
wasn’t Anthony’s fault...what I think was actually happening was that Tony
would sometimes ‘rush’ through some material and if someone wasn’t familiar
with it...they might not get it all.
Other times I would notice that Tony
would have us do certain maneuvers with the tractor trailer and while he made
sure that the other woman and I knew what he wanted us to do and he would
explain it to us....often he wouldn’t give Anthony enough details to do the exercise
correctly often leaving out vital points. It made Anthony look bad and I can
only imaging how he felt inside.
Then Tony would make comments to me
about how stupid Niggers were. I was white, had a Italian name ( Rullo ) and
I’m sure he felt comfortable letting me know his true thoughts about blacks.
One day we were told that we would
meet at the ILG station in Wilmington Delaware to practice. It was fine with
Anthony and I as it was our station and closer to home.
Tony explained that we would practice
backing up to the loading docks. Since our station manager Mike Mitchell had
come out to watch ( and surprise...he may have been partially sober) Tony told me to back up to the dock first.
He knew it was an easy exercise for me and I guess he wanted to look good in
front of Mike.
I got in, backed up the trailer to
the loading dock door and had it centered perfectly like I had done it a
thousand times before. Fact is I had done far more complicated backing than
this and in far worse conditions. Afterwards I pulled the truck back to the
starting position and got out.
Mike Mitchell motioned me over to
where he was standing. When I got there he asked me how it was going and I said
something like “no problem I’ve driven trucks before”.
Then
he said, “ how’s my nigger doing?”
“You
mean Anthony,” I asked.
“Yeah
the nigger, how’s he doing...do you think he‘ll make it to the ramp and back
without wrecking my truck.”
“Yeah
Anthony will do fine, he’s a fast learner, he‘ll be okay,” I said.
“A
fucking Nigger tractor trailer driver,
just what I need...first time he scratches it and I’ll fire his Black ASS,”
Mike replied.
He hated blacks and hated to see
them do good. But then so did every other white man in management that I talked
to. It was almost like it was a rite of passage for management at Fedex.
Or was there some “secret white club
within the company that even I didn’t know of.
The rest of the training was spent
at and around the Philadelphia ramp .
One
day Tony set out cones and said we had to back up like a snake between them.
Then he turned to me and said, “go ahead Gary show them how to do it.”
He
had me do it first because he couldn’t and didn’t want to look bad.
It
was really no big deal, I had backed up in much worse areas, in far more difficult
situations. I just got in and back through the cones. Then I parked the truck
for the next driver. Even Tony was impressed but it wasn’t really that big a
deal.
When it was Anthony’s turn to try it
Tony began telling him how to do it and what to look for. But it was the wrong
instructions. When Anthony tried it he couldn’t do it the way Tony told him to.
So I climbed up to the door and told Anthony the “right way” and what mirrors
to look at. Anthony said that Tony told him another way to back up. And I told
him to just do what I said and it would work. Anthony did as I said and he made
it through okay.
Later, Anthony asked me why Tony
told him to do it wrong. And I just replied that maybe Tony wasn’t that good.
What I didn’t say was that the whole
time Anthony was trying to back up the way Tony told him to, Tony was laughing
at him and calling him a stupid nigger. And saying how he’d never pass his
training course.
There was several times Tony did
that to Anthony and every time Tony would laugh at him and make fun of Anthony
while Anthony was doing his best.
Well Anthony did get through (CTV)
tractor trailer driving school and I think he would have made a great driver
for Fedex. But as I recall, he didn’t drive a CTV truck much or even at all.
Maybe he got wind of Mike’s threats or maybe he just felt so intimidated by the
Racist atmosphere at Fedex that he was afraid.
Oh and just to let you know...I was
trained to drive a Tractor Trailer by a guy
named Willie Burl. He was a trainer at ICI Americas and he was good,
real good. He was better than most Fedex tractor trailer drivers ....OH YEAH
HE WAS ALSO BLACK.
It was about 7:00 PM and I was
nearly finished with my route . "Since you're
almost done tonight I need
you to help Carol ( not her real name)
she’s a little backed
up tonight. Can you do that
for me Gary", Larry the dispatch asked.
I told him I would and that I had one more stop then I
would call him.
He said thanks and something about always being able to
count on me to help.
He was getting the help he needed and so he was saying
nice things. Larry knew
all the routes at the station
better than anybody. He also knew how to work the couriers ,
to get them to do their best.
He had been a dispatch for awhile now and had gotten good
at it.
After I finished doing
‘Alloy Surfaces’ which was my last stop I got a Pepsi then
called Larry on the radio.
He told me the extra stop was at 1210 market street, on about the 5th or 6th
floor. That it was a law firm
and that he appreciated me helping out.
It only took me about ten minutes to get there and a few
more to find the right
floor. When I got off the
elevator I saw why the courier needed help , there were about 30
or 40 courier pak envelopes
(the big two pound ones). There was no one in the office
area and the envelopes were
just left on the floor. This is a common practice when the
stop is a regularly
pickup. Especially if the pickup is
after office hours.
All of the shipments were courier pak envelopes. Normally
they are
for shipments up to two
pounds at a cost of $25.00. And for
each pound after that you
were charged extra. I grabbed
a couple of them and started writing up the
airbills. The contents inside
generally weighed about one pound and some a little more, it
was just some legal
paperwork. When I had finished about ten of them the other courier
arrived.. "Hi", she
said, "been here long?"
"Just a couple of minutes, do you get this many every
night,” I asked.
"Sometimes more, sometimes a little less but as a
last stop it's a lot,” she
answered as she started in on
the pile. "It's crazy the way they make us run around like
this, I don't mind working
but to do this route I have to speed all over town. And one of
these times I going to have
an accident Carol said."
I replied that I also had to speed to make my route work.
"Well anyway how is the wife and kids" she
asked . She was always so nice and
considerate. I often wondered how she managed to put up with all
the stuff going on
with the drugs and stealing
in the station. She didn't go to the ramp very often if at all so I
doubted she was aware of what
went on there. She was in her second marriage , this time
to an older man that
appreciated what a good woman she was
We would often talk about
our kids and spouses. She had
a daughter, by her first husband I think, and she was very
proud of her. And she was determined to do well in her
life, she wanted to go to daytime
where the money was better
and also so she could spend more time with her daughter.
And she knew that she would
have to hang in there to make it to daytime.
We chatted back
and forth as we worked on the envelopes trying to get them done
and get back to the station
as quick as possible. Finally we were done writing up the
airbills and I started coding
up the envelopes which had been thrown together into one
pile.. As I began to read the
airbill for the zip code so that I could write on the three letter
code of the destination
station the package would going to. When I noticed that she had
written (4) and (5) pounds in
the spaces where you marked the weight on the airbill and
hadn’t seen any that weighed
over two pounds. I thought she had made
a mistake and
said to her ,"Carol this courier pak is only about a pound , you
marked it at (4) pounds
and it’s definitely less than
two and there's a lot more like that too."
"Oh Gary, you know what they tell you about marking
up the packages heavier
than they are. Everybody does
it, you know that."
"Yeah I know
, Colin told me to do that too but I don't do it ... it doesn't affect
me either way. I just write
in what it weighs nothing more."
'Yeah but you know what they say... make all the money for Fred that you can
and some may come back to you
someday, or something like that."
she said.
"Suppose these guys catch you writing up more than
the envelopes weigh ", I said.
"Oh they
won't know , nobody checks the
airbills, I've been doing it since I've
been doing this pickup and no
one's said anything about it yet. The managers know it
and the courier that trained
me taught me to do it,” she said.
And she probably
was right , for as far as I know she kept doing it and no one
ever raised a stink about it
. In fact after that night I would
occasionally check the
packages coming down the
conveyor belt at the station and at the airport ramp. And
many times I would see the airbills on packages written up at a
much higher weight than
the package actually weighed.
It was easy to do, many times the
customer wasn't even
there when the package was
picked up so the courier would put down as much weight as
he or she thought they could
get away with. And even if the customer did complain all
the courier had to say was "oh sorry I must
have made a mistake" and he or she
was in
the clear. And the money just
kept rolling in....
LESSON....MANY TIMES COURIERS CHEAT CUSTOMERS BY WRITING
IN HEAVIER WEIGHTS THEN A
PACKAGE REALLY WEIGHS.....REVENUE!!!
We headed back into the station and unloaded the freight
on the belt. Then, we
would load our bigger
packages into the cans for the tractor trailer that Ted would drive
and the Overnight Letters and
Courier Paks would go into large plastic bags that I would
drive to the airport ramp
along with some miscellaneous freight. It would be just another
night at the ramp for me. But
tonight was Friday night and everyone would be in high
spirits because the weekend
was here. And some would be high because of good drugs.
Things were going okay for me at Federal. That is to say
that no one had
called me in for any problems
I was having at the station. John, the
manager at the
Philadelphia Ramp had told me several times that he liked the way that I jumped in
and
busted butt to help get the
planes off in time. Except for all the theft and drug activity
going
on it was an okay place to work.
I was working near the belt unloading the evening freight
when a Federal van
comes barreling through the doors. The driver slams on the brakes
and slides
about five feet coming to a
stop a foot from the conveyor belt. His van was
pointing towards the belt,
not backed up to it like it’s supposed to be so that the freight
can be unloaded out the back.
And it stopped at an angle to the belt not even straight.
Several people working near
the belt with me had looked up startled to see Al Ferrier
make just another drunk or
stoned entrance into the station. It was hard to imagine how
he hadn’t killed anyone yet.
I had seen him many times in the station looking like a
drunk on skid row. His
pants usually looked like he
had been in them for a month and his shirt often had food or
beverage stains on them. I don’t believe I ever saw Al with a
clean or neat uniform on.
And he usually wore dirty sneakers “not Federal Express issue”
which never had the
laces tied and often fell off his feet if he walked fast. And it
seemed that nobody wanted
to stand near him because of
his odor. Several of the couriers told me that his paperwork
was unreadable and he often
had to borrow money because he would lose or spend the
money he had been given by
customers for their shipments if they paid in cash. He even
tried to borrow money
from me several times.
Supposedly he had had more accidents than any six
couriers in the station. And
several times I would
see him do drugs while there. He was an
unbelievable mess. And
numerous times I had heard the dispatcher give Al’s pickups to
another courier because
he couldn’t find them or was too messed up to keep up with them
even though he had
been doing them for years.
Things on my route seemed smooth, the customers were
great and my pickup
times were getting better all
the time. Yet when I was first asked if I wanted to come in to
do some daytime deliveries it
caught me off guard.
I was about an hour into my evening shift one evening
and my dispatch told me
to call into the station
because my manager at that time, Colin Baines
had wanted to talk
to me. When I got to the next
stop I asked to use their phone. I dialed up the station and
asked to speak to Colin. He
said." hi Gary how is it going tonight ?"
"Not bad ", I replied , “is there something you
wanted?"
"Yes there is,
how would you like to come in tomorrow and do deliveries," Colin
asked.
"Sure I said, where is it ?"
"Well it's in your area mostly, the guy on day work
has a doctors appointment ",he
said. and usually I ask the
nighttime courier in the same area to come in when the
daytime courier is going to
be out".
"Great what time do you want me in ?" I said
"Well, come in a little after seven to get your
truck ready and loaded, and are you
still taking the freight up to the ramp," he asked , "I don't want you to be up
there all
night."
"Yes I'm still running it up, but I can probably
just run it up and not stay to load
the planes if you
prefer," I said.
"Yes that would be good Gary. And remember no
failures, the regular
Courier doesn't have
failures... got it"?
"I got it Colin, I wont let you down", I said.
I knew he was probably more concerned with my hours than
he was my being
tired. Because several times
before he had voiced concern about the hours that others
were working, who knows maybe
they held it against him in his evaluation if he had too
many hours in his work group.
At any rate he seemed pleased at my suggestion because
he said he thought was a good
idea but to check with John at the ramp to make sure I
wasn't leaving him short
handed , but to be sure to mention that I had to come in
tomorrow morning to do
deliveries. I wound up staying for an hour to help load freight
which wasn't too bad.
I came into the station before seven (a little early) to
be sure all was well with my
truck and make sure it had
gas in it. Then the mail came down from the ramp and
everybody was busy sorting
out the mail for the routes. The freight would arrive soon
afterwards. And it did , the
other couriers helped me get my freight off the belt because
some of the deliveries were a
little different then my route.
When the freight
was sorted and I was trying to set up
how I was going to deliver
my packages Colin came over to the belt and told
everybody to come over to the
side away from the belt.
"Look you guys
I got a call yesterday, a woman called in here to say that she
saw a courier smoking a joint
at 10th and King street around eleven o'clock am", he said.
And at that everybody started to laugh.
"Go ahead and laugh, but you guys know you don't
want a urine test and I
certainly don't, I have a family . I don't need to have a
call come down from district
headquarters asking me
questions. So I'm telling you guys now , it's stupid to light up a
joint in midday or any other
time in the middle of town certainly not at 10th and King,
that's all I'm going to
say... you guys are big boys so act
like it". And he turned away and
left.
I walked over to my truck thinking, are these guys
nuts smoking a joint in front
of city hall in the middle of
the day. That's where the courts houses are and where a lot of
cops go in and out all day
long. I turned to a courier whose truck was next to mine and
said to him, " is that
crazy or what", expecting him to agree with me.
"Ah, no big
deal", was all he said.
I got into my truck and left the station , I had
deliveries to make and I was going
to be busy enough doing that
. No time to worry about who it was because it could be
anybody and apparently none
of the other couriers were concerned. Oh well , this
daytime stuff was sure
different than any place else I'd ever worked.
I was running my ass off trying to get all my P1 freight
delivered before 10:30 am
to meet my commitments and
not have any failures. A failures is when you didn't deliver
a package by the time the
package was promised to be delivered by. In my area all the
P1 packages had to be
delivered 10:30 Am. or they would be
failures. When 10:30
passed and I still had about
ten stops to go I realized the other
courier knew his route a
lot better than I did. Oh I
knew he should have been better than me . After all he had been
doing this route a lot longer
then me and so should be better. But not by ten stops , and I
had really done pretty good I
thought , I knew where all but two or
three stops were and I
got them right away.
I pulled up to my next delivery stop and ran inside,
" sorry I'm late" I said to the
receptionist.
"You're not late, the other guy rarely gets here
before 11:00 ", she answered back.
"You mean he's not here before 10:30 ", I asked
dumfounded.
"No , he usually gets here between 11:00 and 11:20
sometimes later ", she said,"
so you're doing fine".
She signed off the package and I ran back to the truck. So maybe
I'm not doing too bad after
all I thought . But it was too late to fudge the times on my
delivery sheet. The delivery
times I had already written in would show that I had lied. I
did however mark up the next
nine deliveries in about (15) minutes according to my
delivery sheet. Of course it
wasn't true and it was obvious to anybody who saw the times
that they couldn't be
correct. But when Colin looked at them he said something like,
"your last nine looked
good". I got the point.
I ran deliveries on that route several times after that
and put down false times
every time I got close to the
10:30 a.m. commitment time, I'm not really into lying ,
especially over something as
simple as that . But that was what they wanted , either lie
about the times or no day
work...no failures no matter what. And I did have an occasional
failure but nothing like the
real amount.
And as my manager Colin said,
"make Federal Express look good at
any cost".
I was back on my regular evening route doing pickups and
was in the middle of
my route when I got a call
from my dispatcher. He said he was having a problem
with a customer on Ted’s
route and could I help him out.
I told him I could.
He then proceeded to tell me that there was a customer up
on Philadelphia Pike
that was pissed off at Ted
Autry because he kept coming in stoned
and would give the
customer a hard time for no
reason at all. He said that he knew I was busy but that the
customer didn't want Ted back
there again and could I make the pickup for him. That it
was a little out of my way
but that he would try to get me help if I got into trouble doing
pickups later. Of course I
did the pickup for him. Larry remembered favors and besides I
might need help out there
some time and it was better to have Larry on your side if you
did.
When I got to the customer, a lady began explaining to me
why she didn't want
Ted back there again. She
said that he always came in reeking of marijuana and would
cuss at them if the shipment
wasn't ready. She said it was the third
time she had
complained to the station
about him and no one seemed to care and worse yet they kept
sending him back to do her
pickup. I told her something like "I understand" and made the
pickup. Later on that night I
saw Ted and he asked me about the pickup, "what did
the lady say about me",
he asked. I told him she didn't say much just that there was a
misunderstanding of some
kind. He seemed to accept that as an okay
explanation and let
it go at that. Yet later that
very night when he was getting ready to get into the CTV to
drive it to the Philadelphia
ramp I saw a plastic bag with what looked to be about two
ounces of pot with his
stuff and a pack of rolling papers
inside the bag. They were laying
on the conveyor belt for all
the world to see. He didn't seem to be worried in the least that
everyone could see the bag.
Because after he sat it on the belt, he went into the office for
about 10 minutes to talk to
someone while leaving the bag out in the open for all the
world to see.
When he came back out to the CTV he grabbed his stuff including the bag of
pot
and put it in the truck. When
he saw me watching him he said something like "hey Rullo,
what's happening". His
eyes were blood shot and his pupils were dilated. Later that night
I would see him up at the
ramp laughing and joking with the guys. His behavior blended
in well with the rest of the
guys because his were not the only eyes that were dilated and
red there. I didn't think Ted was a bad guy, just a
guy with a problem. It just seemed
that most times he was high as a kite or down in the
dumps with no middle ground.
There were some odd jobs to be done in the station and
since no one else on the
evening shift wanted to do
them I was asked if I wanted to. Of course I did, it was more
hours for me so I said yes.
I came in around 9:00a.m and was working by the conveyor
belt putting together
some shelving. There was a pile of freight setting on the belt and
at first I thought it was
from a missort that had
come to our station by mistake which sometimes happens. But
when I looked closer I saw
that it had our station ID letters on it. They were marked ILG
and were P2 freight. which meant they didn’t have to be delivered
till 5:00 PM.
At about 9:45 another courier walked through the big bay
doors. She
put her bag on the belt and
said hi. Her name was Aileen. I had heard that she had a bad
reputation but didn’t really
know her that well. As she began putting the freight in a
van I realized that it was
her freight and that someone in management had apparently set
her up with a “special
route” of P2 freight just so that she
could come in at 9:00a.m.
everyday. It was the only P2
route in the station and I may have found out why that day.
When she had almost all her freight in her van Mike Mitchell came over to the
belt and he seemed very mad
at her. He asked her why she didn’t call dispatch to tell him
she would be late. She just
kind of shrugged at him. And Mike told her to come into his
office when her truck was
loaded. After he left I said to her that he looked pretty pissed.
Aileen said something like ... “yeah I shoulda called
Larry”. ( the dispatcher )
Then she shocked
me when she said, “it’s okay, Mike’s easy, I’ll just get him
high and give him a quick
blowjob and he’ll settle down”.
Was she serious I don’t
know, because she closed his door when she went to see him.
Things were always changing in the station, the black cargo handler was gone
and had been replaced by
another.
Then that cargo handler moved to another position. His
name was Buck Miller
and though he was moved up to
sometimes dispatcher and I guess all around whatever
came up for him to do. I
often wondered why he was moved up. He only had a high
school education as did most
of the other couriers there, but he was moved up ahead of
other couriers with much more
time and experience and some with more education.
So now we were to have a new cargo handler. Tom was his name and he was
coming down from the
Philadelphia area. His had a brother who was in sales for Federal
and worked out of our station in Wilmington, Delaware.
Tom seemed like a nice enough guy and also had a lot of
savvy so it came as no
surprise that he settled into
his job quickly. What did come as a surprise though was that
he was a convicted felon and
was on parole or probation I was never sure. According to
him, he had served about five
years in a federal penitentiary for selling cocaine. He said
he had been running a big
time cocaine operation and had been busted by the feds for
selling it by the kilos. I
had always known there was a tremendous amount of
illegal drugs coming into and
through our station and the thought occurred to me that
maybe some of those in
management in our station had hired him because of his contacts
in the drug world.
He was a very out going
guy and he would tell you most anything about himself
if you hung around him long
enough. I mostly saw him when we were handling freight so
we did our share of talking.
Frankly I enjoyed talking to him. He had led a very exciting
lifestyle and he was never
too embarrassed to talk about any aspect of it. He said he was
married and had five
kids. Several times he asked me if I
wanted to buy cocaine and that
he could get me kilos real
cheap. When I would decline he would ask if I knew
anyone who did.
He bragged that he could even ship it out safely through Federal if they wanted ,
that is as long as he got his
money first. I had never thought about that and so I asked him
how was that done. I was
curious.
"Well" , he said,
you can drop the drugs off in a drop box, that way no one can catch you
shipping it. You mark it bill
recipient, or third party, or use a phony credit card number.
By the time Federal sends out
the bill the shipment will already be delivered. When you
address the shipment for the
recipient, you use the address of a neighbor or a vacant
house near the person you’re
sending it to. Send it to any house where no one is home in
the daytime. Mark the
'Airbill' to be dropped off by the
courier so no one has to sign for
it. Then have the person your
sending the drugs to watch the house for the drop off, and
when the courier drives away
he just walks over and picks up the shipment.
And even if the cops should
be following the shipment, the buyer just has to say that he
was picking up the package
for a neighbor so it wouldn't be stolen. So they get their drugs
fast , free, and safe."
I asked him if it really
worked and he replied that he had done it that way before.
"I've done it, yeah it works," Tom replied.
Well I guess you learn
something new everyday I thought.
Tom also told me how he almost killed a guy in prison
over a pack of cigarettes ,
“hit him over the head with
an iron that he had put in a pillow case,” he bragged. He said
they took the guy out in an ambulance
and that he thought he had killed they guy.
You had to believe that a lot of stuff that Tom said was
somewhere near the truth.
He was working at
Federal as a cargo handler at
around ( $8.00 ) an hour and only
working about 25 hours a
week. Yet he had just bought a Mercedes Benz , a Rolex watch
and a big wad of money all
the time since starting. All that and a wife and five kids to
support.
But Tom did do a good job otherwise.
When City Bank , ( a credit card company I believe ) moved into our complex.
They had just become a new customer and because they shipped a large volume we
were trying hard to please them. Many times their shipments ( mostly Courier Pak Envelopes ) weren’t ready to go
until late in the evening, sometimes
even after the shuttle to the ramp, had left the station. A lot of times Tom,
who lived in the Philadelphia area ,
would load the Courier Paks into the trunk of his Mercedes and race to
the ramp. He used to brag that he would be going 130 MPH up I-95 to the ramp with kilos of Cocaine
and City Banks shipments in his trunk.
After Tom had been at Federal as a cargo handler for awhile he
decided that he wanted to go out on the road as a courier. And I guess someone
within the company thought it was okay to have a convicted drug felon on parole
as a courier. So after putting in time as a cargo handler Tom was given the
okay to go to courier school which was located in the Liberty District
Headquarters in Pennsylvania before becoming a courier.
But while there he ran into some
problems. There were several rumors as to what actually happened there. One was
that he was bragging about being a convicted drug felon. And another was that
he had tried to sell some cocaine to another trainee and the “new” trainee
turned him in. And I guess on that one
I will never know. But whatever did happen , it seems that for some reason
after he was there for awhile, they decided to give him a drug test and he
failed. Since he was up at the Liberty District Headquarters and had no
connections there...he was terminated. However I truly feel that if a similar
situation had come up in the Wilmington station or another one like it, he
would have “somehow” gotten out of his problems without a REAL DRUG
TEST.
We had been loading freight that night and in our usual
hurry when the driver
from Dover came through the
doors, her name was Helen. She was late and almost didn't
make it in time for unloading
the freight from Dover for the run to the airport.
"Sorry," she
said. It was something about one of the couriers getting in late. We were
scrambling to do her freight
so I didn't get it all. Something I did notice though was that
she smelled of pot
a lot, she was reeking of the
smell. I had thought at the time , that
maybe if she hadn't gotten so damn high she might have been on
time. She just grabbed
her paperwork and personal
stuff and walked away.
One of the couriers said that she worked over fifty hours
a week when she
ran the Dover route. And I thought at the time that it would be great
to get in that many
hours every week and how I
could use the money. Little did I know that one day I would
have that same Dover route,
but not for the right reasons. I would see Helen often after
that night and many times she
would smell of pot or be on some other kind of illegal
drugs usually cocaine or
speed. She did them “all” she often bragged and it was evident.
Many times she didn’t even
seem to know what she was doing or saying but just kept
moving and talking till she
got it right.
On several occasions when I was working in Wilmington she
offered to sell me
drugs and I would use one
excuse or another to not buy any until she finally gave up on
me. But we still talked when
we met and she would give me the scoop on who was doing
what drugs and who to buy
what drugs from. She had done, in her words "just about
every drug there is on the
street with just about everybody in the station". When I asked
her if everybody in the station
did drugs, she said yes almost all of
them do. She once
said, "Gary , didn't
they tell you that Federal Express was the number one shipper of
illegal drugs in America? There are so
many couriers and managers at
Federal that do
drugs that almost nobody
turns in the drugs that they find. That's why so
many drug dealers use us". "Hell
", she said, " I've even stolen drugs out of shipments
and
got high with a manager while he was giving me an evaluation, during
deliveries". I’d heard that before so nothing she had said was new to me,
more of affirming that which I had
already learned.
LESSON....FEDERAL
EXPRESS IS THE NUMBER ONE SHIPPER OF
ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA...THAT’S WHAT MY MANAGERS AND OTHERS HAD SAID AND I
BELIEVE IT.
Well I guess Helen and some of the others were
right. I felt that some
of my customers on the
evening shift were sending illegal
drugs through Federal . But I
had gotten used to it and just tried not to make a big deal about
it. because when I
mentioned it to a couple of managers at the station , they only
wanted me to bring
it in for them to use for
themselves not to call in the police. Jerry Salomone said to bring
in the next shipment so they
could sample it and be sure that it was "good enough to be
shipped through Federal
Express". "After
all", he said with a laugh, "
they didn't want
any cheap drugs to be shipped
though Federal Express, only the best”,
he would say with
a smile.
Helen
wasn’t the only courier who drove to the Dover station. Sometimes it was
Charles. I believe that he had the route before Helen and that she filled in
for him while he was on vacation or wanted a break from the Dover route.
Whoever had the run that day started at the Wilmington station and took the
freight to Dover to be delivered. There the other couriers would separate the
freight into different areas and deliver it.
One
evening I was helping to load the freight in Wilmington and Jerry Salomone came
over to the conveyor belt. He wasn’t the regular night time manager, but he had
been in the station for awhile just hanging around. He was talking to several
of us about nothing in particular when Charles came rolling in with the freight
from Dover. He was running a little late but not enough to hurt. He looked
tired and I asked him if he’d had a hard day. He shook his head and said
something about how it was crazy down there today and walked away to do his
paperwork as we began unloading the freight from his truck onto the belt. After he had gone into the office Jerry
said, “that fucking nigger, if he did ten stops a day, he’d say he had a hard
day”. “That’s all they do whine and complain, a hard days work would kill
them.” I didn’t know Charles well as
I’d only seen him in the station a few times. So I asked Jerry ,”is he lazy?” He
replied.” they’re all lazy , I’ve never seen a nigger that knew how to
work hard yet.” Then he walked away.
In
time I got to know Charles. Though we were never close. I even got to run his
route in Dover. I learned that he wasn’t lazy at all. In fact I often thought
that he worked as hard or harder than most of the whites in the station. In
time I learned to like him and respected him. He was just a regular guy, a hard
working family man. He was smart and did his job well. And in fact he did all that they asked of
him and more. If it weren’t for that damn skin problem I think he would have
made a great manager. You know ...the “Black” skin problem. I guess it was a
problem he couldn’t fix.
After all, how did they figure to
make Al Ferrier a manager with his record. Or
even
Buck Miller. How could they even begin to compare the experience and knowledge
of
a new guy like Buck Miller who had done
only a few ( if any ) deliveries with that of
Charles
, when Charles was a seasoned veteran who had seen it all and learned it all.
And
who
had countless times come through when it counted. I guess Charles was destined to
be
a driver simply because he was Black..
One day I got a call to do a pickup
at Vinnies Pizza in Claymont. It was a small
pizza shop in the Northtown
Plaza shopping center. Vinnie was the owner, a small
Italian guy. He seemed like a
nice enough guy. I learned that he
usually shipped out an
Overnight Letter and most
times it wasn't ready when I got there so he would offer me a
soda while I waited for him.
Sometimes when he wasn't busy we would
talk. The talk
was small talk about family
and what I did for fun. I began to think that Vinnie was
involved with illegal drugs.
I also got the feeling that Vinnie was feeling me out , trying
to get an idea of what kind
of person I was. Maybe he was trying to decide if his
shipment was safe with me or
maybe he was considering whether or not
he wanted to bring me in on
his drug activities, I can't say for sure but he did ask a lot of
question about my personal
life and habits.
He would send it
to Brooklyn, New York and he stapled
the entire edge of the
Overnight Letter. and I mean
entire. He would take a staple gun and staple every half
inch around the Overnight Letter. And several times he asked me if they X rayed the
shipments in Memphis where
the sort was. I had heard the question many times before.
The customer would imply that
they were shipping picture film, but you knew why they
were asking. Most times they
had drugs in their shipments and were afraid the x-ray scan
would pick it up. I replied
that no they didn't. That made him feel more comfortable, you
could see it in his eyes.
Vinnie called for a pickup about once a week and on occasion
twice. It was always the same
he’d wait till I got there, then he
would get the O.L. ready .
Vinnie kept a 357
revolver and a shotgun in the back of his restaurant near an
area where he wrote up the
airbill. One time I was kidding him about the stapling on the
O.L. and he picked up the
pistol and said," nobody messes with my stuff ". I think he was
trying to tell me something.
As I continued to do the weekly pickups at Vinnies I
began noticing several hard
core looking guys there. They
were definitely Mafia types, I could've been wrong but they
looked and behaved every bit
like most of us perceive Mafia characters to be. When I
went there, they would just be sitting or standing around, not
working and not eating
just kind of eyeballing the
people as they came through the door. One a big Italian guy
had on a big golden necklace
and looked right out of the God Father.
Evidently someone else from Federal was also taking a
good look at the
overnight letters with the
staples all around them. One day when I came in do the pickup
Vinnie motioned me into the
back, which was normal , and when I got there he stuck the
357 revolver in my stomach
and said," Gary, you tell your motherfucking druggie
couriers to keep they're
fucking hands off my shipments. Cause if they don't they're going
to wind up dead." He was
mad, evidently someone at Federal was ripping him off.
I explained to him that I never messed with anybody's
shipments and I didn't even
use drugs. I could see that
Vinnie was serious, someone had been ripping off his
shipments , all or part I
didn’t know. He’d had enough of it. It
seemed really stupid that
a courier would steal from
the Mafia but I think that they were so used to stealing from
shipments that they just felt
like they would never get caught.
Anyway I told Vinnie that
I would spread the word back
at the station that he was pissed and somebody was going
to get hurt if they didn't
leave his stuff alone . And that I
would take special care of his
shipments so that at least no
one in the station would get a chance
to steal them or
anything inside. Somehow I
think he believed me. I was scared , but not nearly as scared
as I would have been if I had been the one who
had stolen his shipments. And I think it
showed on my face. Because
after he looked at my eyes for a few seconds, he said
something like, okay Gary ... you handle that for me,
tell those thieving couriers to
keep
their fucking hands off my shit and to steal from somebody else. Or I will kill
them.
Of course I didn't tell anyone at the station about his
shipments. I didn't want to
draw anymore attention to the
O.L.s than necessary. That's all I would need to do, let
everyone at the station know
that there were large shipments of drugs and money going
back and forth from Vinnies
and New York. No, this one I would keep
quiet about, I
wasn't going to alert the
boys that there was big money and drugs to be had on my route .
The best thing to do I felt,
was to just keep it as quiet as possible and not let Vinnies
O.L.s be left out in the open. And as for calling
in the cops... no thanks, I figured that in
time Vinnie would get caught.
And hopefully in a way that would not involve me, I didn't
need to have any problems
with the Mafia. All I wanted was to do my job as best as I
could and go home to my
family.
LESSON...EVEN THE MAFIA
COULDN’T ESCAPE THIEVING COURIERS
AT
FEDERAL EXPRESS...
Although Vinnie kept making his
regular once a week shipments on my route for awhile, there was a time when he
stopped. I didn’t realize it as I was busy with other things. Then all of a
sudden out of nowhere he puts in a call for me to do a pickup for him. When I
went to his pizza shop I asked him what had happened because I hadn’t heard
from him for awhile. Vinnie looked like he was near death. He was pale and had
lost a lot of weight. I asked him if he was sick. He hesitated for a moment
then replied that yes he had been sick. He said that he had a case of
pneumonia. And he looked like it. I asked him if he was okay and he said yeah
he was okay now.
It didn’t occur to me then but his
shotgun and pistol were gone and he had always kept them out in the open where they easily accessible and could be
seen by anyone coming into the back of his store.
Things seems to
quiet down at the station for awhile and I was settling into a
regular routine and building up my route.
One afternoon my supervisor Colin came out and passed out a bunch of trinkets
to the couriers getting ready
to go out on pickups. I was handed about
two dozen small
mirrors in velour type cases
with the name Federal Express on them. Hand them out to
your best customers I was
told. They were about
2"X4" and looked like the
little cocaine
type mirrors you see on TV
shows when the drug users did their cocaine while in a car.
One of the couriers joked
that it was Federal Express’s way of saying it was okay to do
cocaine.
Other couriers were saying they were going to keep theirs
for souvenirs. And I
thought that was a good idea
so I kept a few and gave out the rest to a few regular stops
that I had since I had
started my route. The girls at the Mercedes Benz Credit Corp.
would have to have some and
the receptionist at the Dentist office on Foulk road of
course and maybe another stop
or two.
That evening I had
a few free minutes so I drove through the Macdonald’s on
Philadelphia Pike in North
Wilmington. I ordered a Cheeseburger and a strawberry
shake, my regular if I had
time. When I pulled up to the window to pay for my meal the
girl at the counter, who
looked all of sixteen asked for a mirror.
I looked at her and wondered how she knew about the
mirrors, and figured that
she or her friends had gotten
some from one of the daytime couriers. I thought well she's
not a customer of mine but
what the hell and reached into my bag and handed her one
while I was waiting for my
sandwich.
She looked into the velour case at the mirror and then
looked at me and said .
"where's the rest"?
"What ", I said. I didn’t understand what she
meant..
You know, she said, the other guy put some coke (cocaine)
in with the mirror.
The other guy put cocaine in the pouch with your mirror,
I said in disbelief.
Yeah, she said, then she went on to say that she had
gotten cocaine from a another
courier before.
"Well I don't have any and I certainly wouldn't give
you any if I did , you can't be
much more then sixteen”, I
said.
"I am sixteen", she said as she handed me the
my bag and shake. I just shook my
head and drove away. I didn't
want to know any more. For all I knew he was also having
sex with her and I didn't
want to find that out either. And I really didn't want to know who
the courier was, though I had
a pretty good idea that it had to be a
courier whose route
was either within mine or
pretty close to it.
The Making of a Federal
Express Manager...
As I said
earlier, Al Ferrier was probably the “worst” example for a courier that I
have seen. And many times I
had wondered how he managed to keep his job, on a
number of occasions I had
even heard the dispatch complain that Al had been out of
contact for a number of
hours. It would usually happen in the afternoon when he was
needed to do pickups for
customers who had called in. And many times the dispatch
would have to give the pickup
to another courier on the route next to Al’s because
Al was nowhere to be found
and the other couriers either didn’t know or wouldn’t say
where he was.
I was coming in on the evening shift and some of the guys
were talking about Al.
He had had another accident.
Some said he had about a dozen or more . It was
unusual because it was thought that you were gone after about three. It was believed that
a number of Al’s accidents
were somehow covered up by Jerry and Mike. But there was
only so many times you can
get away with it.
One of the
couriers said that if Al couldn’t drive as a courier that management
would probably make him a
manager and everybody busted out laughing. I thought it
was funniest thing I had heard in a while. Al couldn’t even tie
his shoe laces
or buckle his belt and they
would make him a manager....NEVER. Not even at Federal
Express.
WRONG... it was
announced that AL would be moving up to manager. Everyone
in the station got a hoot out
of that. And when I told the guys at the airport ramp, those
that knew Al shook their
heads in disbelief. They said they knew Al as the courier who
came to the ramp stoned or drunk out of his head and always wore sun
glasses at
night. Several said he
couldn’t even tie his shoes, he was the
sloppiest person they knew
they said.
Another handler said that he remembered some of the guys
finding Al passed out
in the cargo area of a plane.
It was in the tail of a 727 where they loaded the bags of
envelopes and if no one had
saw him and woke him up, he probably would have died
there. Because they believed
there was no oxygen in that section of the cargo area. When
the plane went above ten
thousand feet Al would be dead.
Many said they couldn’t believe how he kept his job at
Federal, and that they
made him a manager was just
....unbelievable.
I was by the conveyor belt at the Wilmington station
when Jerry came over to
me, he had a shit eating
smile on his face. “Hey did you hear”
he asked. I knew what he
was talking about , because
bad news travels fast, but I pretended I didn’t know that Ted
Autry had been fired . “Hear
what”, I asked.
“I finally fired that fucking nigger, it took me awhile but I got him, and in time
I’ll fire all of them”, Jerry replied.
“Who do you mean “, I
asked.
“You know, that fucking
nigger Ted Autry”, Jerry said.
Then he went into how he was glad that he fired Ted
because he was a nigger and
he hated niggers. He called
them niggers ( when they weren’t around ). He went on to say
that he would fire every one
of them if he could. That he didn’t even like to be around
them.
I had known that Jerry hated blacks from past conversations with him He said
that, “he didn’t
want any damn niggers in his station”. He said they were too stupid and
lazy to work for Federal Express, and that most
managers felt that way too. That’s why
they
only hired as few as they could.
Sometimes there were other managers present
when the subject came up and they always seemed in
agreement with his beliefs. Once
another manager said that blacks were okay
sometimes if you kept them apart , but
if
you put two or
three of them together they started acting like niggers. And then they got
lazy and caused problems. That’s why they kept as few
as possible at the stations. And as
“few” as possible in management. It was easy to do,
just give them lower evaluation
scores in the “right areas” of their performance reviews and play down certain skills or
good points
they might have. Could this be going on across the country, I wondered.
Similar thoughts were expressed at the Philadelphia Ramp
where the freight was
flown in and out. Several
times I had been told that they try to
keep it as white as
possible because they didn’t
want the (niggers) to come in and mess it up. Usually
the black freight handlers at
the Newark, NJ station were referred to as ( monkeys or
baboons ) and used as a
reference to what happens when you get too many “niggers”
together. That’s why there
were so many problems and thefts there. I had heard this
reference about the Newark,
New Jersey ramp a number of times and
one winter night
while I was working at the
Philadelphia ramp around Christmas and a driver came in
with the news that they had (
fired a bunch of niggers at the Newark
ramp for stealing).
Funny thing was , a lot of thefts went on at the Philadelphia ramp too
but it was almost 100% whites working
there so little was said or done about it.
One night while I was working the
conveyor belt one of the cargo handlers I was working next to , a small Italian
girl, started hollering and jumping around. “ I smell POT”, she yelled,
“ I smell POT, I know it, I can smell it a mile away.” Then she jumped
up on top of the conveyor belt and started walking around smelling the
packages. One of the supervisors yelled at her to get down and she yelled back
that “aw come on you guys got the last ones , come on let me have it, I found
it first” At that , every body close by
laughed. “Come on”, she begged. And all
the time she was sniffing the packages
on the belt, she looked like a beagle sniffing for rabbits, it was really quite
funny. Finally the supervisor nodded his head up and down to indicate it was
okay. But others were also trying to figure which package the POT
was in. In just a little while , less than a minute, she yelled,
”jackpot.” It was a small box about the
size of an 8” cube. She held it to her
nose and took a deep sniff then yelled ,”ALL RIGHT”, and began tearing open the
box. Others ran over to her and when she opened the flaps, they all got quiet.
I was about thirty feet away and was watching,
fascinated by her skills at smelling pot and watching the commotion.
Then she got down off the belt and walked away carrying the box and accompanied
by several of the others went into the back.
Then one day...
I was pulling into a parking spot in my personal vehicle
at the station in
Wilmington when I
accidentally hit a co worker’s car bumper. I was coming in to work.
The
hit was so slight that there wasn’t even a scratch on my vehicle but the other
car’s bumper which had previously been hit in another accident and repaired was
knocked loose. And it would have to go to a repair shop to be repaired. Since
there was no damage to my vehicle and no one was in the parking lot to see what
happened I could have easily parked
somewhere else and the car’s owner
would never have known it was me
that hit him. There were no marks or scrapes of any kind on my vehicle so it
would have been easy. But I
couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t want anyone to do that to me and I just couldn’t
do it to someone else whether I knew them or not. I went into the station and told Larry our dispatcher that I had
hit one of the guys cars but didn’t know whose car it was. When I described it
he knew immediately and called the courier to let him know. I waited in the
station with my insurance papers so we could get it straightened out. The owner
of the car was a daytime courier named Leto.
I knew him and had talked to him
casually several times, even driven his delivery van on the evening shift a few
times but I always tried to use another delivery van then his. The reason was
simple, many times I had found cocaine baggies in the truck he had used that
day. And several times he had offered to sell me cocaine while we were in the
station. Good stuff and a good count he said. You can ask the guys in the station he bragged. It happened while
he was getting his paperwork and freight out of the van at the end of his day
and I was getting it ready to do pickups for the evening shift.
Though his car was drivable it would
have to go into the shop to be repaired.
He
put his car in a repair shop and I thought it would be simple to get the car
repaired and my insurance would take care of it . But it wasn’t.
The insurance company had told him that they would pay
for a rental car similar
to his. But he rented out a
bigger nicer car for much more money anyway.
Then he tried to get my
insurance company to pay the extra money. When they wouldn’t ,
he tried to extort it from
me. Funny thing was he only threatened
me at work. ( well
maybe not so funny ) At first
he would come up to me at the conveyor belt and threaten
to beat me up if I didn’t pay
for the car rental. At first I thought he must be out of his
mind.
He was a big guy but I wasn’t afraid of
him physically. Though I must admit that because he was a day worker and seemed
to be well connected in the station I did have reservations about having
problems with him at work. Hell, I was
still considered a “New
Guy” who was still part time on the
evening shift. And I didn’t do drugs with the regulars and wasn’t into selling
or buying stolen freight in the station. So I knew that I was pretty much on my
own if any problems came up. And in case I didn’t already know that, he made it
perfectly clear to me. He said that the managers wouldn’t help me because they
were “his “ friends and that he supplied and did cocaine to them. So don’t even
bother going to them for help,” he bragged.
I remember thinking ...this is
great, here I am trying to do the right thing about hitting his car when I
could have easily gotten away with it, and this bastard is trying to extort money from me. And I was
certain the managers wouldn’t help me. I just hoped that if there was a problem
, that it wouldn’t happen in the station.
Then one night while I was working
at the Philadelphia Ramp they were talking about two guys that got fired for
fighting. One had said that the other guy hit him first but they were both
fired anyway.
Later that night on the way back to
the station I thought about the two
guys that got fired. I had two kids at home,
a wife and a mortgage payment. I had worked hard to do a good job at
work. I didn’t need to be fired for fighting with some Dumb Ass druggie
courier. I decided to go to my manager, who at that time, was Jim Herestofa. I
had concerns about going to him because he had already told me in past conversations
that he did drugs and I thought that he might be connected to Leto, but I felt that I had no choice. My wife
was having serious back problems so I couldn’t afford to lose my job. I not
only needed the paycheck, I also needed the Medical insurance.
I told him the whole story about
hitting Leto’s car and how he was trying to extort money from me while I was in
the station. That he was harassing and threatening me at work and threatening to cripple me up. I told him
that I fully understood that if something happens away from the work place ,
that it was between Leto and me. But that I felt certain that he was going to
come after me in the station because all of the threats had happened there. And
I couldn’t afford to lose my job for fighting because I had a wife and kids at
home and a mortgage payment.
He seemed to listen and said that he
would “talk” to Leto about it and get back to me, but he never did. And the
threats continued so I went to him again and asked if he had done anything. He
didn’t seem to want to talk about it, but finally said that yes he had
mentioned it to Leto. That was it. Nothing more, and to be honest , that’s
about as far as I thought it would go. I realized then that just as Leto had
said...I was on my own in the station and had to hope it blew over. I just
tried to keep my distance from Leto.
Of course it never works like that
in “real life”, Leto’s threats continued. Until one day in the station. I had
gone into the bathroom to wash my hands after pretriping my van and Leto
followed me in. He again demanded money from me. I told him that though I was
sorry I hit his car, it had been repaired and paid for by my insurance company
and that he had no more money coming. That he may as well forget about trying
to get extra money out of me because it wasn’t going to happen. He got very
angry and threatened me again and then he left the bathroom.
I finished drying off my hands and
left the bathroom. But as I was walking down the hallway Leto came up and
attacked me with no warning. At times when he had threatened me before I had
felt that he would attack me and kept my guard up , but this time he said
nothing and I thought he was just going to walk past me. In fact it was ...as
he passed me that he attacked. And I
was totally unprepared for it and found myself on the floor.
Later in the hospital I would be
told that I had a concussion and a badly injured shoulder and I was sent home.
My manager Jim Herestofa wasn’t in the station at the time, but he called me
later that evening at home. After I told him what happened he said that since
it was Friday to just come back in Monday and they would take care of it then.
WELCOME
TO FEDERAL EXPRESS...
When I reported to work Monday a different manager by the name of AL
Ferrier handled the assault. He told me
that Leto had said that ... “I must have fallen, and that he never even saw me”.
Then Al Ferrier hands me a
letter and tells me that the managers decided to give me a letter for “disruptive
behavior”.
I asked Al , “ what is this letter for”?
“Well,
the managers all talked it over and decided to give it to you,” he said.
“But
what did I do to get a letter,” I asked.
“Well
we just thought that you should have it,”
he replied again.
“
But what did I do... that I get a letter for”, I again asked.
“What
disruptive behavior did I do” I asked again.
“
Well I dunno”, was all he said.
“Was
Mike Mitchell ( the senior station manager ) in on the decision to give me a
letter,” I asked?
Al
said that yes Mike knew all about it, and that he agreed with the other
managers.
I
couldn’t believe it. Leto had bragged that he was connected with the other
managers (through drugs) and that they
would take care of him, but this was unbelievable.
I
said to Al, “ you mean that after Leto has threatened me right here in this
station repeatedly for months, and after I went to my manager Herestofa about
Leto’s threats, and he “supposedly” talked to Leto about them... Now when Leto jumps me in the station and I
wind up in the hospital...that I am the one to get a write up for “disruptive
Behavior’?
“Well
yeah,” that’s what we decided to do,” Al answered.
“But
even Leto said I didn’t do anything wrong”, I stated.
Al just looked at me.
“Did Leto get a “letter for disruptive behavior” too,”
I asked him.
“No” he said, “only you.”
“So
I’m asking you again Al, what did I do
to get this letter for disruptive behavior” ?
“Look,” he finally said, “you can file a GFT (
guaranteed fair treatment ) grievance if you like”. “But I can tell you ...it won’t
change anything, management at Federal basically does what it wants” he
continued.
The
last line about management should have been an “alarm” to my ears,
but I was so mad at the time I wasn’t thinking straight.
I had previously worked in
company’s where they had unions to protect workers from this kind of
shit. I just couldn’t believe they were doing this to me. I knew that without a
union I would have a hard time with this. Evidently it was ALL of management in
the station together. And I stood little chance to beat them together.
But
there was no way I was going to let them do this to me without a fight.
“Well
I’m going to file a GFT ( Guaranteed
Fair Treatment ) complaint”, I stated and walked out.
The next day I handed Al a GFT (
which is a kind of grievance letter ) . And when I didn’t get a response from
it a week later I asked him about it.
“Oh
that”, he said, I threw it in the trash can”.
“You’re
not allowed to”, I said, “ isn’t it
supposed to go to district headquarters”?
“Well
I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere,” he replied.
So I filed another one and I never
got a response from it either. Then I wrote directly to District Headquarters
and included the GFT letter and explained that Al Ferrier had thrown away the
first ones. I also included a complaint
about the managers in the station . That they were using drugs and
should be given drug tests. That maybe the whole station should be given drug
tests. I had talked to a friend at Federal and he expressed doubts that I would get any justice from
management. And that I could forget
about a station wide drug test. He told me once before in Atlanta, Federal
Express had so many complaints and stolen shipments that they did a station
wide drug test and lost nearly the whole station. And they would NEVER do that
again. He wished me luck but had little confidence that Federal’s management
would ever be honest. And he was right ...nothing was done. I talked to my so
called personnel representative who came down from the district. Boy was that a
waste of time. No wonder Fedex doesn’t want a union. He couldn’t have been less
help if he had been Leto’s father. I’m surprised he didn’t tell me to pay Leto
the money and apologize. I even wrote to the Eastern Regional Director. And
guess what....they referred it back to District Headquarters. It seemed to me
that there was no way Federal was going to disrupt it’s operations at a station no matter what was going on there. I
even contacted Headquarters in Memphis. I was desperate I felt that my job at
Federal would be taken away from me and I hoped that just maybe someone in
company headquarters would give a damn about decency and the safety of their
employees. But I never found a single person in Personnel that gave a shit.
Meanwhile back home I had received a
letter from “guess who” sent by U.S.mail. It was a letter with threats of death
and newspapers clippings about people that had been crippled and killed. Also
their were clippings of people getting fired from their jobs. The letter told
me to pay the money or else I would wind up like the people in the clippings. I
was so upset at the time that I
couldn’t even tell my wife. I was just holding out hope that somehow someone in
management would stand up and say ...”hold on this has gone far enough”. But they never did.
To
be honest I just couldn’t believe that a major company like Federal
Express would let a bunch of druggies
get away with this and do nothing about it. I had heard so much about Federal
and how fair they were with their workers .And yet they never did answer my GFT
complaint , they refused to acknowledge that it even existed. And the letter
for disruptive behavior would be in my
personnel file forever. On top of all this I was in serious pain from the
Leto’s assault. The injuries to my head passed
but the shoulder injury turned out to be a torn rotor cuff. It was a very depressing time.
Then
Leto struck again...
It was my son’s third Birthday and I
was in Wilmington with my brother. I had taken along my son because it was his
birthday and he wanted to be with Dad.
We had parked the truck and as we started to cross the street I reached
back to get my son’s hand. My brother
had seen the Fedex van approaching and
thought nothing about it.
(
I had never told him about Leto and all the trouble, I was too embarrassed to tell anyone but my wife). Never in my
life had I ever let anyone give me a hard time much less hit me and get away
with it. But being married and having children to support sometimes forces you to put up with more
shit than you normally would. As I turned around to face the street with my
son’s hand in mine Leto veered his van towards me and struck my leg and ran
over my foot leaving his tire print on my sneaker. He also brushed my surprised
brother as he sped away. Fortunately no one was seriously injured though he
missed my son by less than two feet.
We called the police and went to the
hospital to get treated. When the cops got there they took the report and
examined the injuries. They told us
that they would arrest and prosecute Leto.
My wife arrived at the hospital
extremely upset. After all not only her husband but also her only son was
nearly killed by an ASSHOLE that had already caused me injury and both of us a
lot of grief.
While we were at the hospital two
Federal Express managers showed up. It was Jerry Salamone and Al Ferrier It was obvious they weren’t concerned about
me or my son. . Jerry actually had a smirk on his face and Al looked like he
was so stoned that he didn’t even know
where he was. For all I know they both might have just done a line of
cocaine. Al just stood there looking
stupid with a blank look on his face like he wasn’t even there, or didn’t know
he was there. Jerry said little and my wife who was very upset started screaming
at him to get rid of that asshole Leto. Jerry just got a bigger smirk on his
face and he and Al walked away.
It should have been a simple trial.
But when money is involved it never is.. Instead of staying out of it like they
had promised and letting it be settled in court between the police, Leto and
me Federal Express hired the most
expensive Law firm with the BEST lawyer in the entire state of Delaware. And I’ll always believe that they
also influenced the judge. Though I have no way of proving it. Looking back
over the years , there is no way that an HONEST judge could have found Leto not
guilty. His log book showed that he was there at that time, there were two
witnesses with injuries and his tire tread was on the top of my sneaker. That
coupled with the past attack should have resulted in a conviction .
But Wilmington is a dirty little city with dirty little judges and it wouldn’t have been the first time that I had heard of a judge
being bought in Wilmington. Nor would it be the first time that a major
corporation had bought a judge. Especially if the CEO of that corporation was a
man like FRED SMITH who had himself hit and KILLED a pedestrian and fled the
scene without reporting the accident or stopping to see if the victim was alive
or not and he got away with it..
Was
that the “SMITH SYSTEM “ of defensive
driving?
If you hit someone while driving just keep driving,...and get big lawyers to
get you out of it.
IT certainly worked for him ...and
for LETO too.
After the trial, just like Magic
there was a job opening in Dover, Delaware for a courier. And I was asked to
take it. I knew I was branded as a “non druggie and no thief” in the Wilmington
station and that they were worried because I wouldn’t back down. I may not have
won but I wouldn’t quit or back down and that bothered them. They wanted to be
free to do their drugs and steal from the packages without looking over their
shoulders. I knew that but for the
sake of my family and keeping my job I
did take the transfer to Dover .
The catch was...always before, the
courier was paid for the long drive to and from Dover and you did it in a
company van. It was a Forty-five mile ride which took about an hour to drive.
And I had to do it in my own vehicle on my own time. It wasn’t right or fair
but at least I had my job and I could pay my bills.
It was a small station in Dover and
the couriers were more country like. Oh they may have done a little drugs but
it was nothing like the open market in the other stations I had seen. And I
doubt that they stole much if at all. They were basically good people that
didn’t mind hard work and they worked together. They welcomed me in saying they
knew all about the drugs and games that were played in Wilmington and other
stations.
AND
THEN...
I was trained to defraud the government and betray my country
As I said earlier , my manager COLIN
BAINES instructed me to commit my first act of fraud. When he told me to treat
a CSS shipment like common freight even though he was well aware that the
customer was paying extra for special handling. But I never realized how much
FRAUD was going on and I never would have guessed that Federal Express was
committing FRAUD against the United States Government on a nationwide scale. Most of these shipments were classified
sensitive military shipments . This was BETRAYING AMERICA and our MILITARY
DEFENSES. Couldn’t you be shot for that
I wondered or at least put in jail for a long time ?
It was Helen Wilson who trained me
and showed me how they DEFRAUDED the
MILITARY and the UNITED STATES.
She was training me on my new route
in Dover, it was to include the Dover Air Force Base which shipped a lot of
sensitive classified military shipments.
We were in the Dover Air force Base
Bldg. 505 and there were CSS ( Constant Surveillance Shipments ) which meant
that the shipments were CLASSIFIED and needed special surveillance and
handling.
After we signed the paperwork and
loaded the van ( it was like a large bread truck). She left the base and headed
south away from our station. I asked her why we weren’t taking the classified (
CSS ) military shipments back to the station like we were supposed to. And she
replied that “we” never do , that no one does. I was truly shocked. What if we
get caught I asked. “Isn’t that a federal offense ? To which she replied ,” look , everybody does it all over the
country don’t you think FRED has it covered?
Those FUCKING IDIOTS in the
military don’t have a clue of what’s going on. You see how stupid they are at
the base, it’s that way all over America.”
“Besides,”
she added, “that’s the way I was
trained to do it and I’ve done it with managers and that’s the way they want it
done. And it’s not going to change
now”. She said every body at Federal Express does it, it’s no big deal, “so just do it like this.”
Helen also told me how She had sent items through Federal
for free just by using a phony
billing account number and a fictitious name for the sender and the
recipient. Then she realized that it
was easier and safer to just put an
“express manifest” sticker on the package with a Priority One sticker”. “That way there was no way
they could catch it,” Helen
Explained, “that way, you could ship anything for free and it
would still get there the next day . And according to her a lot
of people at Federal Express were doing it for the same reasons.
. And we continued on our way NOT back to
the station as Federal Express had
contracted with the military
and other government branches to do and
NOT as they were
being paid by the government
to do, but instead we headed south to
do
other pickups and deliveries. We NEVER went back to the station with CSS
military shipments instead we would always leave these sensitive classified
military shipments unguarded and out of our
sight for periods of up to an hour. No wonder there was always so much
stuff stolen at Federal Express. It
seemed no one gave a shit about all the
lost and stolen shipments. Many times they just lied to their customers about
what happened to their valuables and other stuff.
When I was in the Wilmington station
and my manager had told me to defraud Mercantile Press I did as I was told. But
this was the military , this was the United States Government. This was
crazy. I just couldn’t believe that
Federal Express would commit fraud
against the United States. Of course I didn’t know as much about
Federal at that time, as I would later
find out. Even then I had thought at first that maybe just maybe Fred Smith and top management in Memphis
didn’t know that the CSS service was a sham. Maybe they didn’t know the
Military was being ripped off. But in time I came to realize they knew quite
well their CSS service was a rip-off and a fraud. This was without a doubt a
conspiracy to commit fraud against the United States Government.
By staying out on a route and
doing pickups and or deliveries the
courier leaves the shipment unguarded and out of sight many times. Thus in this
way it is handled like “common freight” and
not given the constant surveillance the customer paid for. And which
Federal Express contracted for and promised to provide to the government. These
military shipments could be sabotaged
or stolen or anything and Federal Express didn’t give a shit except for
the money they were stealing from America. They were GREEDY BASTARDS with
no morals or scruples, it just took time to realize it
Also each government CSS shipment had a DD1907 signature tally
sheet ( Department of
Defense ) attached to it. Which had to be signed by every person who handled
the shipment Many times when the
courier did finally return to his or her station, the CSS shipment was just
thrown on the belt with the common freight. Rarely someone would sign for it but
not often.. The DD1907 tally sheet shows this and also it shows that the person
who takes the CSS shipment to the Ramp doesn’t sign for it either but hauls it
up the road just like “common freight” which results in it being thrown on the belt along with the rest of
the other common freight and then unto the plane again unsigned and unaccounted
for.
Then it is taken to Memphis where
someone “rarely” signs for the CSS shipment but most times doesn’t which again, was a violation of government
regulations.
Then it is flown out to the airport
of the state where it is to be delivered and most times perhaps always, again
thrown in with the common freight and taken to the station where some
courier will get the CSS shipment off the same belt ( where he will also get
the other common freight ) and sometimes he will sign for it and
sometimes not. But rarely if ever will there be someone to make him sign for
the CSS shipment before he gets it.
Then he will mix it in with the “common freight” and deliver it where
ever it comes up on his route and it is
left out of his line of sight and he or
she winds up being more than 150 feet away from it Again violating
military and government regulations
Thus from the time it is picked
up to the time it has been delivered...it has pretty much been handled like a
common freight shipment. With no true constant visual contact and certainly no
constant chain of signatures of the
people who had custody of the shipment. Millions of dollars paid by the
government for nothing...
A multi-million dollar fraud committed by Federal Express...against
America There was much
that I would learn from Helen, some
would be stuff that I already knew and some came as a shock or at least as a
surprise if that was possible. On about the second day of training while we on
a lunch time break she went into her bag and removed a small case which held
cocaine. As she opened it up she turned to me and asked if I wanted to “do a
line” to which I declined. And at
that she chided me saying something like” aw what’s the matter, are you scared
?” I tried to explain to her ...not on the job ( I didn’t do drugs at all and a
number of times I had used that excuse to get out of being ostracized by the
other couriers and management ) Then
she went on to state that she had done cocaine with “ ALL “ the managers at ILG
except the station manager Mike Mitchell. But that she knew he did cocaine with his girlfriend Aileen a
courier in Wilmington. And, she
explained, when she did drugs with the managers it was almost always on the job
or at the station.
Then she went on to tell about her FIRST PERFORMANCE REVIEW at Federal Express.
She had been there about five months
and it was time for her review. Her manager was JERRY SALOMONE and they
were out on her route. She was delivering in the Newark area on Baltimore Pike
when she pulled up to this apartment house. SHE REACHES INTO THE BACK OF HER
TRUCK AND PULLS OUT AN OVERNIGHT
LETTER , THIS IS POT SHE SAYS TO
JERRY, I DELIVER IT ALL THE TIME. SHE SAYS THE NEXT THING SHE KNOWS, JERRY SALOMONE IS RIPPING THE OVERNIGHT LETTER APART TO GET THE POT. SHE SAYS THERE IS ONLY TWO
OUNCES OF POT IN THE OVERNIGHT LETTER
THIS TIME AND JERRY STEALS ABOUT ONE AND A HALF OUNCES OF IT. THEN HE PUTS THE REST IN ANOTHER OVERNIGHT LETTER
AND TELLS HER TO GO UPSTAIRS AND
DELIVER THE REST TO THE DRUG DEALER. WHICH SHE DOES. THEN THEY
DRIVE OVER TO HER APARTMENT AND GET HER
POT PIPE AND SPEND THE REST OF THE DAY DOING HER ROUTE WHILE BEING STONED. TO
TOP IT OFF SHE ONLY GOT A 4.0 ON HER
PERFORMANCE REVIEW AND SHE WAS PISSED. SHE THOUGHT SHE
WOULD GET A 7.0 FOR STEALING DRUGS WITH HER MANAGER. SHE SAID SOMETHING
LIKE, “ BOY DID I GET FUCKED I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN A 7.0
Little did she know that Jerry had already told me the same story and
others at times when he was trying to convince me to bring him drug shipments
for his personal use. I had been doing
pickups in North Wilmington and had a customers sending out drugs in Overnight
Letters. I hadn’t personally seen the drugs but I knew they were in the
shipments and had gone to Jerry to tell him about it and see what I should do.
His response was to bring it to him to try out. And in the conversation he
mentioned that maybe he should go out on my route with me so he could see if
any others were shipping drugs through Federal. He said that when he was out with Helen he had gotten some great
pot. And that he had shown her and
other couriers how to look for drugs in the shipments.
SHE LATER BRAGGED ABOUT STEALING COCAINE FROM ANOTHER OVERNIGHT LETTER GOING TO A STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE. SHE SAID THAT
AL FERRIER HAD ALREADY TAKEN SOME BEFORE HER.
AND THAT SHE OFTEN GOT HIGH IN THE FEDEX PARKING LOT IN THE MORNING WITH MANAGERS AND COURIERS.
It was not even surprising to me
that it had happened. I believed the story. Because Jerry and Al Ferrier had
tried to get me to bring them shipments of illegal drugs several times. And
several times I had watched Al as he went through Overnight Letters and Courier
Paks looking to find drugs and other valuables while we were in the station.
And if nothing was in the packages he just put the mail into another container
and switch the Airbills. And no one knew the difference. And Al
left no doubt the drugs were for “HIS” personal use.
Often I would hear the couriers making drug deals on our two way radios in the trucks, Helen wasn’t
lying , she was bragging and besides Helen was too dumb to lie.
She said that she had never STOLEN
DRUGS before that time with JERRY but that since then she had done it many
times and had gotten some very good drugs that way, and some other articles but she wouldn’t
say what. She said every body does it,
it’s no big deal.
With that SHE SNORTED UP THE COCAINE LIKE SHE
HAD DONE IT A THOUSAND TIMES. As soon as she put the rest of
the coke away she wanted to walk the Blue Hen Mall.. So off we went to
walk I
watched Helen do cocaine several
times while she was training me on the route and a few times she would smoke a joint as she rode with me while I
drove up to the Wilmington station at
the end of the day. I didn’t feel too comfortable driving up the road while she
smoked pot but she was well connected to Jerry and I realized nothing would
happen to her. Most likely the best I could have done was get myself fired somehow. My thought’s at that time was
to just stay as far away from management as possible. Besides I was more afraid
that she would STEAL something out of the shipments and then blame me if there
was any problems. She had told me how
she would regularly go through Overnight Letters and Courier Paks looking for
drugs and other stuff to steal. She said that sometimes she went into the
shipments to see “just what” a particular customer was sending through Federal
Express. The way she talked , she and
many other couriers stole from shipments whenever she felt like it, which was often.
I finished my training on the route
with Helen and took over to run it just as I was instructed to.
But I would later come up with a plan to stop the fraud or at least slow
it down somewhat. At least that was my plan.
On the following page is a drawing
which demonstrates how a CSS shipment changes hands during transit and shows just how many signatures should be on a
properly signed DD1907 signature tally
sheet.
Later in the book I will show a
number of DD1907 tally sheets from around the country and you will be able
to see just how well the Federal Express CSS service actually did work. Or
should I say how it “didn’t work”.
***THERE WILL BE A HARD COPY OF THIS
DOCUMENT IN THE BOOK
As you can see when a CSS shipment
is properly handled in transport there should be at least ( 8 ) signatures of the people who had possession
and responsibility of the shipment and as many as ( 10 ) counting the signature
of the shipper.. Also the shipment and the truck carrying it is NOT supposed to be out of the
courier’s sight and more than 150 feet away from the courier. Most of
the CSS shipments would have only one or two signatures on them. Which means
they were being treated like common freight.
When a courier picks up a CSS
shipment the only way to keep constant surveillance of the shipment is to take it directly back to the station.
Otherwise the courier would lose
sight of his truck when he goes into a building to make deliveries or other
pickups. Or if the CSS shipment is a
delivery the courier should make the CSS shipment his or her first stop for the
same reasons.
It is a very simple thing to do. Just bring
the CSS shipment back to the station after picking it up. Or if it is being
delivered , just deliver it first. And have ALL responsible persons sign for
it. Of course that would add cost to the shipment.
But by looking at the CSS DD1907 tally sheets a person can tell, just
about every time ... the courier just keeps doing his or her route while making
deliveries and or pickups while the CSS shipments are in his truck. You can
tell that by the large gap in time between the sign offs on the DD1907 tally
sheets ( not counting the signature of the Memphis hub if there is one ) , plus
the different code letters which indicate the locations of the next person who
did sign.
When a courier is out on his or her route doing pickups or
deliveries the time between each stop should be about fifteen minutes or
less and very rarely more than one half
hour. So if a courier did pick up a CSS shipment the next signature should be
within fifteen to thirty minutes later. And the courier who delivers a CSS
shipment would normally have it delivered and signed off within 15-30 minutes
after leaving the station
Of course doing it that way would cost Fedex extra money for the gas
and the couriers time. And by
ignoring the contract regulations Fedex could save millions of dollars. Just handle it like common
freight...equals stolen money ...equals FRAUD
I have never heard of a stop being more than one hour away from
another. And most times on the DD1907
tally sheets there would be hours even days between the time a courier picked
up a CSS shipment and the next time someone signed for it. ( so where was the
CSS shipment all that time.? ..In the back of the couriers truck while he was
going in and out of buildings doing other pickups or deliveries or maybe even
doing drugs as Helen did. Federal Express was making millions for a service they didn’t have.
Plus
the fact that I had never seen
a DD1907 tally sheet with the proper number of signatures ( most have as
little as two or three not counting the shipper or the recipient ) as shown on
the following pages. I am absolutely
certain that the CSS service was a FRAUD.
And after viewing numerous documents I feel certain that Management
at Federal Express was involved in the
conspiracy to defraud the United States and everyone else they could (fuck
anyone and everyone they could). They sold and signed the contracts even though
they knew they had no service.
So not only
was the sensitive classified military CSS shipments ( intentionally )
not getting the constant surveillance to guard them, but also the people who
had them weren’t signing the DD
1907 forms. They couldn’t even be tracked to one individual who would be
accountable for them if they were lost or stolen.. And despite what Fedex tells it’s customers about their great
tracking abilities with their packages, every time I have tried to track down
both regular shipments and also CSS shipments my dispatcher was never
able to find the missing packages.
For instance once after trying to find missing pieces of
a classified military CSS shipment ( computers which were specially
programmed to be used for a high security defense system
for NATO in Europe ) for three days no one at Federal Express could find
them and I had to deliver two parts of a five part shipment to the Dover Air
Force Base and boy were they pissed about that.
On the following pages you will see seven DD1907 tally sheets .
The DD1907 stands
for Department of Defense 1907 signature and tally form. Many times these
classified sensitive military shipments were being transported all across
America without anyone’s knowledge of
what they were or where they were. And a lot of times either I or someone else
just threw it into the back of my truck
Sometimes I wouldn’t even know that I had a CSS military shipment on my
truck until I was at the Dover Air Base and saw the paperwork on it. Because
there was no one back at the Philadelphia ramp to sign for or take possession
of these CSS shipments. I know that because I worked there. And no one at the
Dover station knew anything about it unless they accidentally saw them. So
the Military Constant Surveillance
Shipments traveled from Memphis to Dover without anyone’s knowledge. They were loaded into a large can along with
the regular freight while they were in Memphis. Then flown out all over the
United States along with the common freight. This was a violation of the military contract regulations but
that’s the way Fedex did it anyway. It saved a lot of time and money
by doing it that way. Because if CSS shipments were treated just
like common freight there
would be no extra cost of handling them individually. Also in the Dover, Delaware station where I
worked, there was no protective steel cage as was required by the regulations
in the military contracts and no fire or burglar alarms or special security
devices. Anyone could break in at anytime and unless they were observed by someone would call the police, no one
would know.
Although I have many more, I have chosen DD1907’s from seven
different locations to demonstrate that the violations were nationwide
rather than just some isolated area or state.
1) The first 1907 “CSS signature and
Tally Record” is from Tool, Utah.
One
signature at 4:30pm another at 7:15pm ,one in Memphis 2:01 am ( the third
signature is by DAFB personnel )
( military time translated to standard time )
2) The second 1907 is from San Carlos, Ca. (Litton Systems Inc.)
The
courier who picked up the CSS shipment signed for it at 2:45pm. The next
signature is from E. Stokes in Memphis at 1:20am. ( who got it there ) and the
last signature is from DAFB personnel .( who took it from Memphis to Dover Air
Force Base ) ?
3) The third 1907 is from Camden
NJ ( RCA )
The
first courier signed for it at 3:15 PM. It went back to his station then the
airport, then flown to Memphis, back to the Philadelphia Airport then driven to
Dover station, then taken to DAFB. ALL
on one signature. Second signature is from DAFB personnel.
4) The fourth 1907 is from
Washington, D.C. ( sec. government shipment )
The
pickup courier signed for it at 3:00pm. Next signature is (4) hours later, you
can drive through D.C. four times in (4) hours. Note there were originally (5)
pieces in shipment two were lost and could not be found. DAFB refused partial
shipment for five days then finally gave up and took only two pieces I could
find. ( they were pissed )
5) The fifth 1907 is from Denver,
Co. ( DEA )
The
courier picked it up at 3:20pm. It went to his station, then Denver airport,
then Memphis, then to Philadelphia airport, then to Dover station, then
delivered to DAFB.
ALL on (1) one
signature. What a rip-off !!!!
6)
The sixth 1907 is from Chambersburg, Pa. ( Letterkenny Army Depot )
Courier
picked it up at 2:20pm. Next signature is in Memphis at 1:08AM and next
signature is from DAFB personnel at 3:36PM.
7) The seventh 1907 is from
Chambersburg, Pa. also
Note
that there is only (1) signature on 1907 ...the pickup courier at 14:20PM. The
second signature is from J. Resh DAFB personnel.
Notice that not one of these DD 1907
forms has my name on them, yet I delivered everyone of them and had every
shipment in my possession. These
were “classified military shipments” and I and many other
Federal Express couriers and others had them in our possessions and no one
would have known if we stole or sold them.
First
of seven CSS 1907’s here. 7 pages.....
x
x
x
first
1907 ‘s here__________-
x
x
x
x
x
second
1907 form here
x
x
x
x
x
xxx
x
x
x
xx
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
On
the following three pages I have placed three documents. ( I have many more )
(1) a DD1907 tally sheet with only one signature of all the people
that handled this classified shipment
from Corpus Christi, TX. to San
Diego ,CA.
(2) a Government Bill of Laden
( Military GBL ) which describes
the shipment and it’s origin and destination.
(3) a pay voucher, which shows that Federal Express did in fact
bill the government for handling this shipment and did charge them $15:00 for CSS service. The voucher is a statement
of payment.
Note: I apologize that some of the copies are not
quite that clear. Could it be that these were provided by Fedex ?
x
x
x
x
x
Place
billing here
x
x
x
x
x
x
xx
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
After I had been at the Dover
station for a short time a manager came down from Wilmington to do my
performance evaluation. His name was Jim Herestofa. He had been on the evening
shift when I was working out of the Wilmington station. He was a tall skinny
guy, kind of quiet but still had that attitude.
Once when we were both on the evening shift in Wilmington he had told me a story about one of the day
couriers there. We were getting the freight ready to load into the cans but in
a leisurely way as we had time that
night. He said that he had just got a call from some guy in southern New
Jersey. He said that the guy was claiming that one of our couriers at
the station who delivered in NJ had
ripped off his drug shipment and the customer was pissed. That the
customer wanted the courier fired. And that the next time he saw the courier he
was going to kick his ass.
“What did you do,” I asked.
Herestofa
said that he told the courier to be more careful the next time, and that the
guy was looking for him to kick his ass.
I
asked Herestofa if he asked the courier if he had in fact stolen the drugs
He
said no, and that if some guy ships drugs through Federal Express and he gets
ripped off, well that’s his problem. Who’s he going to go to , the cops?
Besides, he added
the courier was a friend of his and
they sometimes got high together.
Helen had told me before, that she had gotten high with him but I had
never seen him do drugs or appear to be on them so I didn’t know if he did them
on the job.
But on this morning Jim
did seem to be acting strange. Not sleepy strange like someone just waking up
in the morning . More like he just wasn’t there, like he was spaced out. Most
times the mornings are hectic so I
didn’t pay much attention to it at the station and besides I had lots more on
my mine. It seemed that my route had doubled since I had been in training with
Helen and I had to hustle like a mad man to make it work. So as soon as I had
my freight in my truck I said to Jim that we had to roll. As we started along
my route doing deliveries it became obvious the Jim wasn’t into it. He wasn’t
even paying attention to what I was doing. He talked very little at first and
even then he rambled like he couldn’t keep his thoughts straight and kept jumping
from one subject to another.
One of my morning stops was in the
Department of Transportation building in Dover. After I parked I went to the
back of my truck to get my deliveries. I deliver to a number of departments
there so I always have to make sure I don’t miss anyone. When I had them all
together I grabbed my clipboard and said ,”ready.” Jim just sat there and said to go ahead that he knew I knew my
job. It was an unusual thing to do. Before when I had performance reviews, the
manager always stayed right by my side never leaving me, especially when I was
with a customer.
I went in and did my deliveries and
said a quick “hi” to the girls in the office. When I came out I went by the
back of my truck and saw that I had
left the back door cracked open. It was an overhead pull down door and either I
didn’t pull it tight or maybe it just didn’t catch when I shut it. Instead of
going to the drivers side door and getting in I just grabbed the handle and
jerked it up. Jim was standing in the back of the truck. Obviously I had
startled him, because he had a very surprised and awkward look. I had stepped
up into the back of the truck quickly out of habit, it was a conditioned reflex. And there was my manager with a
straw in his hand and a small mirror on one of the shelves, next to the
packages, with only traces of white powder left on it. I looked at it.
“Having fun,” I asked, looking at
his face. He didn’t even look at me but just put the mirror and straw back into
his briefcase. Then sat back down in his seat looking very embarrassed.
I started up the truck and headed
back out on the highway.
Several times, later on that day he
would try to explain to me how depressed he was. His wife was divorcing him or
something like that and he was having other family problems. He said that he
was having a hard time dealing with it. He had talked to a woman at Federal
about what he was going through and how it “ALL” seemed to be happening
to him at once. He said that she told him to be thankful that it was all
happening at once , that way it would be over quickly and he would be able to
get on with his life. But that he wasn’t buying it. When he did talk he seemed to go from one subject to another
without finishing , He again, appeared to be rambling at times.
Later that day when we went to the
Dover Air Base to do my pickups. I drove the truck inside building 505 and over
by the shipping area. I backed my truck up to where my freight was located and
got out. There were about a dozen packages for me to pick up and some of them
were CSS shipments.
Jim knew what they were. They were classified military shipments. Which
meant that they needed special protection, Constant Surveillance and Security.
And that the government was paying Federal EXTRA MONEY to provide that
protection. Fedex management had lobbied the U.S. Military hard to convince them to let Federal handle these classified sensitive shipments. Some of the items shipped cost many thousands of dollars, and included
such things as the computers systems used by NATO and European defense systems
and various missile parts to name a few.
But the CSS shipments never got the
surveillance or the security that Federal
had promised and was charging the government MILLIONS of DOLLARS for.
Instead they were treated much like common freight to be left out and unguarded
where they could be LOST or
STOLEN like thousands of other shipments at Federal Express.
Jim Herestofa saw that there were a good number of shipments and
knew that we were in a hurry so he started filling out the airbills along with
me and he may have even signed a few CSS airbills. Soon we had all the packages loaded unto my truck and started out
of the building. After we left the building I asked Jim why wasn’t Federal
Express afraid that the Government might catch on about getting ripped off with
the CSS service that it was paying for.
Weren’t they afraid they would get
caught. His response was that, “ those ASSHOLES at the base were too stupid to
know what was happening. “Fuck them ,” he said, “get all you can get.” I said something about defrauding the
government and how it was a serious thing. And he replied that I was to’ “just
do what you’re told, do it like everybody else”. And that was the end of that conversation concerning the
fraudulent CSS service. So we continued
on down the road leaving the CSS shipments alone and unguarded many times that
day even though it was against government regulations.
I continued to gather all the
evidence of fraud against the government that I could. Every time I handled a
CSS military shipment I would try to make a copy of it. Not once did I
ever come across or handle one that was treated the way Federal had contracted to do. The CSS shipments
would come into the station along with the common freight. In the same cans with everything else. The
driver who brought it down from the Philadelphia ramp never even knew he had
CSS military shipments on his trucks, never signed for them.. No one knew until
it was dumped on the belt with everything else and even then most didn’t catch
it and even if they did they just threw them on the truck going to the
DAFB. I was never asked to sign for a
CSS shipment. But rather it was thrown in my truck and sometimes I wouldn’t
even know I had one until I delivered it to Bldg. 505 at the Dover Air Force Base. And there I would just have someone
sign it off. If of course “ALL” of the shipment was there because sometimes
there were pieces missing from the shipments. Usually there would be only one
or two signatures on the CSS tally sheet anyway. The courier who picked
it up and sometimes someone in the Memphis HUB. But never the eight to ten
signatures of the people who had possession of the package. Where were they ,
if the shipment came up short or missing ( as they have ) there was no real way
of telling who had it last. Anyone
could steal those classified military shipments and no one would know who.
Helen had told me to forget
about the CSS shipments in the truck
while we went into offices and business’s even the Blue Hen Mall. We just
loaded it into the trucks with the common freight like everything else. It
was a free fifteen - twenty-five bucks
for Federal Express. It was
obvious beyond a doubt that Federal Express was committing FRAUD against the government. It was also clearly a conspiracy that was not only nationwide
but also company wide. All over America Federal Express couriers,
handlers, and management were knowingly
defrauding and betraying America and it’s military. Not to mention the thousands of businesses that were sold
on the phony CSS/SSS service that didn’t exist except on paper.
On the following page is a Federal
Express inter office memo dated January
15,1986 that I happened to come across. It is from a John West who was a
Senior Manager of Service Assurance for Federal Express. Here is a man who obviously knew that Fedex
had contracted with the U.S. Military to handle sensitive classified
military CSS shipments. Yet he doesn’t seem to be concerned that it is wrong to
be offering a phony non-existent service so much, as he is concerned that if
Federal gets caught they might
“jeopardize their integrity”. In
other words....we don’t want to get caught.
NOTE:
See writing stating they can’t stop “theft problems” in all of there
services...
How could they let classified military shipments be left out
unguarded and unprotected just for the greed of money ? When they knew they had
major problems with thefts.
What kind of man can say he is a
American citizen when he knows that he and his company are knowingly
cheating and betraying America? Our
servicemen and our military were depending on Federal Express to properly handle and protect these
shipments. And Federal Express betrayed
them.
See
Memo from John West on next page
PUT
IN MEMO FROM JOHN WEST HERE____________-
x
x
x
MEANWHILE...
When I felt I had enough evidence to
prove FRAUD I contacted the Office of
Special Investigations ( OSI )
at the Dover Air Force Base in Dover. There I met with Special Agent Paul Ackerman a government investigator
for the Air Force and showed him what
evidence I had and explained just what Fedex was doing or not doing. He seemed
very interested and made copies of the documents I had brought with me.
Then he set up a meeting with his supervisor so we could all sit down together
to discuss the investigation and how to go about investigating Fedex and the
CSS service. I told them that I wanted to keep all of my copies and they
agreed. So as I collected the documents I would meet with agent Ackerman and he
would make copies and always gave back my originals. Little did he know that I had already made my own copies. It was
my way of making sure that the evidence I collected didn’t disappear. Having the government investigators make copies
of the CSS documents and returning them to me was my way of making sure they
were being honest with me. I knew by then that Fedex was powerful and corrupt.
And I never knew where their connections ended.
We had a lot of meetings which I
also secretly tape recorded . After my experience with Wilmington’s Justice
system and Federal Express I trusted no
one. I even tape recorded the phone
conversations I had with agent
Ackerman.
In several of the earlier meetings
agent Ackerman and another investigator questioned me about the enormous amount
of illegal drugs going through Fedex. He said that DEA, FBI, and
other members of a “special government task force on DRUGS” which met monthly,
was aware that a lot of drugs were going through Fedex and that
management at Fedex were stonewalling
them and wouldn’t cooperate with investigators. He wanted to know what help
I could give him regarding large scale drug trafficking at Fedex. He said that
there were meetings of different government agencies where they combined their
information about illegal drugs. And
that Federal Express was known to be a major vehicle of drug trafficking. I
told him what I could and he asked me to try to find out what else I could
about the drugs going though the company. He also wanted to know about the
flights at Fedex when and where. I said that I would do what I could. While I
knew of many small time drug transactions and dealers at Fedex they were mostly
a kilo or two in scale. Ackerman was more interested in larger drug shipments
and distributions within Fedex. ( more like the huge drug bust in April of 2000
involving hundreds of millions of dollars)
There was always a lot at the Philadelphia Airport ( the ramp ) mostly
kilos by couriers and management coming and going to and from Florida and other places during jumpseats. There was a lot was going through the
Philadelphia ramp. I told him what I
knew but being stationed in Dover I didn’t get up to the Wilmington, Delaware
or the Philadelphia Ramp stations anymore. Management knew I was anti-drug and
anti theft so I wasn’t allowed near those or any other places where those
activities were commonplace.
One day in a meeting at
the Dover Air force Base in the OSI building I had a one hour tape running on
my recorder which I had concealed in a gray bag. I had set it on top of a large
conference table where we were working out a strategy to do a nationwide
investigation of CSS shipments by Fedex. And when the meeting took longer than
an hour the tape recorder clicked and shut off. They all looked at the bag.
Thinking fast, I said to them, “it’s
just a page on my pager, it’s a pain in the ass. After hesitating for a minute they turned their attention back to
the investigation. There was about a
half dozen investigators there and they were into it hot and heavy. They wanted to be sure that they could track
a CSS shipment from the time a courier picked it up till he took it back to his
station . Then follow it to the airport to be shipped to Memphis. Then be at
the airport of the station where it was going to be delivered to. So that they
could follow the courier that would eventually deliver it to the recipient. I
showed them how to do it all, even how to determine “which courier” would make the final delivery of the CSS
shipment. Then it was just a matter of coordinating the investigation. This
would take a while to set up.
I also informed them that I had just
I had just gotten in a CSS military shipment in which two of the five pieces
were missing and my dispatcher couldn’t locate the others. It was from the
RAYTHEON CORPORATION AND IT WAS
A CLASSIFIED ( CSS ) MILITARY SHIPMENT. IT WAS ALSO QUITE VALUABLE. I had tried to get the receivers at the
base to accept the three pieces but they refused and told me to “find the
rest of the shipment fast”.
I contacted our dispatch but she couldn’t find the pieces and made
little effort to. So that night I had to leave the sensitive classified
military shipment in our station. There was NO security alarms there and
virtually no protection from theft.
The next day the missing shipments still did not come in. And the people
at the base were getting very mad. I again contacted my dispatch for help in
locating the missing pieces of the
shipment but she gave almost no help and could not find the missing shipments. So
again I had to leave the three (3) packages I did have, in the Dover station with no protection. The
station was in the back of an industrial
park and with the glass windows and no bars or any thought for
security, stealing the military shipments would be a snap. Even the doors could easily be opened with a
simple screwdriver. On the third
day the missing shipments still did not come in. The dispatcher still could
not track the packages and really didn’t seem to care at that
point. I again talked to the
receivers at the base and somehow I convinced them to accept the three (3 )
shipments and to contact Raytheon about the rest. Agent Ackerman and the other investigators
listened and then shook their heads in disbelief.
AND
IN THE MEANTIME....
They got a new Senior Station
Manager at the Wilmington station. Her name was Stephanie Seberg.
She was attractive, pleasant, and very
intelligent. She didn’t look like a druggie or a thief and I didn’t think she
would understand the games they played in the Wilmington station. Unfortunately
there were others that felt the same way. It wasn’t long after she got there that the death
threats started to come in. They wanted her out. No...she hadn’t fired
anyone, hadn’t even disciplined anyone or given out any warnings of any kind.
Yet they wanted her out and I knew that they would do ANYTHING to accomplish
that even kill her if she threatened their drugs or stealing habits.
I believe the first time that I saw
her was when she came to the Dover station to say hello and introduce
herself to us. Though the Dover station
was pretty much a separate station from ILG with our own manager, we were still
somewhat under ILG’s umbrella so to speak.
After the introductions and formalities were over she
casually mentioned that AL
FERRIER was stepping
down as one of the managers in the station . She said it as politically as
possible. That he had admitted that he had an abuse problem and was seeking
help.
YEAH RIGHT... what she didn’t say though was....Al had been working on the evening shift and
was so drunk that he could hardly stand. That he had jumped into another
courier’s personal vehicle ( a pickup truck ) and ran through a red light a few
hundred feet from the station and nearly killed a girl that worked for one of
our customers . His blood alcohol level was .19 and according to witnesses
including the girl he hit, he was incoherent and stumbling.
Was that another example of FRED SMITH’S....
“ SMITH SYSTEM OF
DEFENSIVE DRIVING.”
It was nothing new to me. I had seen
AL drive into the station in his company
van drunk and stoned too many
times and management had let him. I knew it was only a matter of time till he
hurt or killed someone. I never saw his driving record in the station but I was
told that the reason they made him a manager in the first place was because he
had too many accidents to keep driving as a courier Well I guess that’s a
good reason to make a someone a manager at Federal Express.
I remembered back almost a year
before when I worked at the Wilmington station. My car wasn’t running well and
my wife had driven me to work. She was going to pick me up. But for some reason
AL insisted that he would give me a ride home that night. He had been drinking
and or was on drugs and I was reluctant to ride with him but he insisted so I
said okay. At least my wife wouldn’t
have to come out late at night with two small kids. *And it was before the Leto incident.
On the way to my house he explained
that he was months behind on his electric bill. And that just today he had
stopped the electric guys who came to his house to shut off the power . He begged them he said. They let
him write a post dated check for part of the bill so they wouldn’t have to shut
it off . But he had no money in the bank to cover it.
He wanted to know if I could “lend”
him some money. There was no way that I would ever lend Al any money. So I
replied that things were tight. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out
what he said was an eight- ball of
cocaine that he had stolen out of a Courier Pak Envelope that very day.
Could I lend him a couple hundred bucks and “hold” the eight-ball till he got
some money? He said that he already
owed some of the other guys money and if he gave them the cocaine they would use it.
He said that since he became a
manager he couldn’t go into the shipments as much as before. That before he
could always make $500 - $1000 a week from the mail shipments. I told him that if I had it, I would let
him borrow some money, but that I
didn’t. That I was broke till payday and even then I had bills. I knew I’d
never get the money back and I didn’t want the eight-ball. And you can’t trust
a druggie like Al even if he is your manager..
When Stephanie was telling us about
AL all of us in the station had to bite
our tongues. We had already heard the “whole“ story and knew about the accident
and how Al was drunk. But out of respect for her we just listened and said
nothing to embarrass her. We knew she was having a hard time as it was.
It
was a few weeks later when I was calling up to Wilmington about some missing
freight that Stephanie answered the phone. After a few questions about the
freight. Stephanie got emotional and blurted out, “ Gary, you’ve had problems with these guys up
here, why are they threatening to KILL me”?
We knew there had been threats
against her life. So it came as no surprise when she asked me that.
I knew what she was going through
mentally. I knew that she was also all alone up there and in serious danger.
She said that someone in the station was threatening her life and was going
through her office, even her mail. At first she didn’t take it too serious but
certain events ( she didn’t mention )
made her realize they were serious and she was scared . She said that she
went to district headquarters and because her life was in serious danger a
“PERSONAL BODY GUARD “ was assigned to protect her and keep her alive. She said she thought it was more than one
person in the station but she didn’t
know who. Could I PLEASE help her?
I
told her that if she wanted ..I could meet with her and her bodyguard in a
discreet location away from the station. She agreed and a meeting was set up.
We met in a restaurant away from
both stations . It was just Stephanie, her bodyguard and me. He was a big burly
guy that looked like a pro lineman on a football team. He looked me over REAL GOOD then sat next to
Stephanie. She looked scared as hell and under a lot of stress.
She said that she knew about the
troubles that I had in the station and
felt that because of that, maybe I
could explain to her just what was going on there. I asked her just what kind of threats was she receiving?
She hesitated for a minute then
started . She said that they would leave notes in her office and in her mail to
get out of the station or else they would
kill her. That some one was trashing her office and even going through
her mail. She said that at first she thought they weren’t serious but that now
she realized they were. She also said that they would make threatening phone
calls to her too. “Why did they want her out,” she asked.
I knew exactly why they wanted her
out but the real problem was making her believe it . So I asked her a few
questions.
Have
you written up anyone in the station
since you got there,” I asked.
“No
“ she replied.
“Maybe
you gave someone a warning either written or verbal ,” I asked.
“No,”
she said, “no one.”
“And
to the best of you’re knowledge, you have done nothing to offend anyone in the
station,” I asked.
She
thought about the question for a minute
then answered, “ no, not to my knowledge, “ I haven’t she replied.
“Do
you use illegal drugs or steal from the shipments”, I asked, “you know, do you
get high”?
“No
, I don’t do any of that stuff”, she said.
“Then
I suggest that you leave the station before they kill you or cause you some
serious injury , because they will, ” I said.
It was obvious that she had no idea
what she was up against.
She just sat there for a minute
trying to understand just what I was saying. And whether no not I was right.
But I think she knew I was. She and her bodyguard had probably spent many hours
trying to figure out why they wanted her out. And they had probably arrived at
the same conclusion. But until now no one had told her point blank that it was
station druggies and thieves, her own couriers and maybe even her managers that
was trying to get rid of her, had threatened her life. Why else would only
“she” get the threats and no one else, no other managers? Was it perhaps that
she was the only manager there that didn’t do drugs or steal from the shipments.
Why indeed?
She asked me a little more about my
experiences with the station and how much drugs and theft went on there, how
much did I see ? How many people were involved or was it pretty much the whole
station ? She asked me if I would go
with her to district headquarters and tell them what I knew. I had to hold back
from laughing at her words. I had already told district headquarters about the
drugs and the thefts, had already asked them to do a station wide drug test.
But they wouldn’t , they knew they would lose too many people and disrupt the
station and there might be bad publicity and Federal Express and wouldn’t like that.
As we parted, I told her to keep the
bodyguard with her at all times . And she responded that she did, that he would
pick her up at her house in the morning and never left her side all day. Even
when she went to the ladies room she waited outside while he went in first and
checked it out, then he waited outside when she went in. And at the end of her
day he would drive her to her door.
As I drove home that day I thought
about the things I had seen at Federal Express and of the threats and the assaults. The illegal drugs
and thefts, even the fraud thing with the CSS service. And I wondered how this
could all be happening. Years later when I learned more about Fred Smith and
his fraud, his forgery and his hit and run
incident where he killed a pedestrian and fled the scene and of Federal Express’s nationwide fraud scam
against America, it was easy to
understand.
I also wondered if Stephanie would
escape before they physically harmed or
killed her.
Several days later I got a phone call at the Dover station.
District director Julio Colombo wanted me in his office at King of Prussia,
Pennsylvania the following Friday at 9:00 AM sharp.
When I arrived at district
headquarters I was asked to wait till they were ready, then they ushered me into a conference room with about
a half dozen people. Julio was there with my personnel representative ( haha )
, there were two of Federal’s private
investigators, one was Thomas Sullivan
and the other was Ed Picarella. They were out of New York and Julio
introduced them to me saying they were “his best men”. Stephanie was there with her body guard and
maybe a male secretary. I was asked to sit next to the investigators by the end
of the table. And as I sat down they proceeded to set up a tape recorder,
obviously to record anything I might say.
Seeing this I said to Julio that
since they had a tape recorder to record anything I might say...I wanted to use
my tape recorder which I just happened to bring along to protect myself. I
think he almost shit himself. It obviously never occurred to him that I
might also want to record the meeting. But I stated to him that if I couldn’t
use mine I wasn’t going to say anything and finally Ed Sullivan was able to
convince him to let me record the meeting too. Otherwise there would be no
meeting.
As I sat my briefcase up on the
table Julio looked at it for a moment then asked me what was in it. I had
already taken my tape recorder out of it and was putting a new tape in. I
though to myself, these guys have been
screwing me around ever since I filed the first GFT grievance, today is my turn
to play with them. Then I said to him, “today I only have a tape recorder in
it. But there has been some very
important stuff in this case. I know you won’t believe this Julio but this case has held stuff that will put
Federal Express in the newspapers and on national TV and will cost this
company millions of dollars.” I knew I was being bold, but what the hell.
I looked at the faces around the
table and saw the unbelieving smirks that I knew I would. The kind of looks that said I was just a little nobody that had no chance of ever doing any
real harm to a company as big and powerful as Fedex. Julio just looked at me
and said, “ very funny Gary , very funny”, then he laughed. I laughed too
because I knew what he didn’t
know. I knew that this briefcase had held many copies of military documents and shipping airbills
which showed fraud by Federal Express against the government. It had held
Federal Express documents which clearly showed violations of U.S.Military contracts.
I thought, “ go ahead and laugh now you asshole, I will laugh later.”
After my recorder was set up Julio
introduced everyone around the table. Then he explained why he wanted me there.
That someone was threatening Stephanie and they feared that she was in serious
danger, and he wanted me to give him the name of “the person” who
was doing it.
I asked him why he thought it was
just “one ” person and he said that they were pretty
sure there was only one, however
if I had any evidence that there
was more than one person that was doing this, would I please tell them who they
were.
Which meant that they actually knew nothing
and had no clue as to who it was.
Well now isn’t this just great I
thought to myself. When I had a courier that was threatening me and I told
management about it. Even who it was, they did nothing. When I was attacked by this courier I asked for an investigation and they
pretended it didn’t happen and wouldn’t even acknowledge my grievance. Even
when the courier struck me with a Federal van and nearly killed my son....they
did nothing except hire a big money lawyer to get him out of it. And who knows
what else they did to get him out of it ?
Now they have a senior station
manager who’s life is on the line too, and THEY HAVE THE BALLS
TO ASK FOR MY HELP. They weren’t
interested in cleaning up the station. They just wanted to take out one person while leaving the others to continue doing
their drugs and continue their stealing ways. They didn’t want to make big
waves, just a small ripple or two. Hoping to scare the rest. It was business as
usual. I had to think about it, it would be nice to have those
guys fired. But I was certain it was more than one or two acting alone. I
believed then and still do today that it was a whole group of guys. And I had
to think about helping the very people that refused to help me. I knew what had
to be done to make it a safe and decent station and I knew that they were never
going to do it. My beliefs then and now were that a DRUG TEST would take out at
least 80% to 90% of
the station and maybe more. . So I told them that to straighten out the
station and save Stephanie they would have to do a station wide drug test
including management. But I knew they would never let that happen.
While they may not have wanted to
see Stephanie Seberg killed, she really wasn’t that important to the
company. And they weren’t going to jeopardize the company’s reputation over one “Senior Station
Manager”. At least that’s what I thought then and still do today, only I
believe it more so now. One of the investigators was talking to me now, he was
trying to convince me to help Stephanie. If I didn’t want to name names for the
company , give them some help to protect Stephanie, just a few names and what
they are doing he said. He said they
would handle it from there. He was BEGGING.
Except for Stephanie’s problems,
it would have been comical.
It was tempting, real tempting but I was not going to play their game. I figured that 100% of my problems were management’s fault. If
they had done the right thing when I first went to them it would have been
different. But the managers at the station fucked me, the District Director
fucked me, the Eastern Region Director and headquarters in Memphis said it was
okay for them to fuck me... so fuck
them too.
Let
management solve their own problems. If they really gave a shit about
Stephanie they would have done a station wide drug test .
So I calmly but honestly told them
what I felt. That I didn’t think they really gave a damn about Stephanie or
they would clean out the station. I looked at Stephanie and told her not to
expect any help from the company because they wouldn’t do anything that might
cause them bad publicity. I told her hat she would wind up in a steel drum
floating in the Delaware River before Fedex
would take a chance of tarnishing their name.
Hell, it was an easy task to get rid
of the people threatening to kill her, a station wide drug test, but they won’t do that. And soon she would
be on her own because soon they will
take away her bodyguard. And she
would be an easy target.
It was obvious that Julio was upset.
He was hoping that I would give him one name so that he could just take out one
person and leave the rest of the station intact. He had gone to a lot of trouble bringing everybody together that day
including his two top investigators
from N.Y., but he hadn’t
previously talked to me about it. I hadn’t asked for the meeting and didn’t
really want it. I wasn’t going to drop just one name. I wasn’t giving him just one name so that he could fire just one person and hope to scare
everyone else away from Stephanie.
I left the meeting feeling sorry for
Stephanie. I knew she was in trouble, but unless they cleaned out the entire
station, she would never be safe. There were just too many people there doing
too many wrong things. I couldn’t
really save her and Federal wouldn’t. And I wondered how many times all across America
things like this happened at Federal Express.
I
think Stephanie realized it too...
SENIOR STATION MANAGER
STEPHANIE
SEBERG RESIGNED SEVERAL WEEKS LATER
....
SHE WAS CHASED OUT OF FEDERAL EXPRESS BY FEDERAL
EXPRESS EMPLOYEES !!!!!! SHE QUIT OUT OF FEAR FOR HER LIFE....
She not only fled the Wilmington station,
she fled the entire state of Delaware and fled to another area of the country
where she felt safe.
As a side note..
The meeting was supposed to be a “secret meeting” held in King of Prussia
approximately fifty miles from the Wilmington station and no one was supposed
to know about it. Yet the very next morning a courier from Wilmington told me
that everybody in the station knew and wanted to know what I said. And I had
told no one.
MEANWHILE....
Since I had changed stations and
wasn’t doing Vinnie’s pickups anymore I
lost track of him. Then one day I was reading the paper and there was Vinnie’s
name on the front page. The FBI had busted him for cocaine
trafficking. and he had implicated some of
his Mafia buddies and got them busted too. I figured he was in
big trouble. Evidently the time when I had seen him in his pizza shop and asked
about his health was shortly after the FBI had busted him. I have no idea why
they went after him in the first place but all I can say is...”it wasn’t me.”
I never said a word.
AND BACK in DOVER...
There was a “new position” posted on
the bulletin board. It was for a CTV driver ( a tractor trailer driver) for the Dover station. It was for bringing
the freight from the Philadelphia airport ramp down to the Dover station. The
other couriers were talking about it. None of them were qualified for it and
none of them wanted it anyway. I was
the only one who wanted the job and also the only one who was qualified. I had
already successfully completed CTV driving school and still had my CDL license.
And I did want the job. But I knew management
wouldn’t let me have the job. They knew I had to travel an hour each way to work every day and I
believe they hoped that I would grow tired of the commute and resign. If they did allow me to take the CTV job I
would have started work only (5) minutes from my house.
Also...I
was still thought of as ANTI DRUG and ANTI STEALING, I wouldn’t fit in.
I signed up for the job anyway just
in case management forgot. After the job was posted for two weeks and I was the
only one who had signed up for, it management decided that they wouldn’t give
it to me anyway and threw away the posting. Oh well, it was worth a shot I thought. The funny thing is, ALL the couriers in the Dover station
had already told me that although I was the best and only one for the job,
management wouldn’t let me have it.
And they were right...
When I asked one of the managers
about the CTV job I was told to forget about it.
Instead management waited for awhile
then hired a new courier that they had
to send to CTV school, to run the CTV job. No one in the Dover station was told
about it, he just showed up one morning. His name was Del and he seemed nice
enough. I didn’t hold any grudges against him. I figured if it wasn’t him it
would have been somebody else, but it would never be me. He was just doing his job and trying to
support his family. It seemed that the others in the station were put off by
him because he was black. And no one seemed to want to go out of their way to
help him with his route or at best give as little help as they could.
And when Helen came down to the
Dover station to fill in for another courier who was on vacation she couldn’t
call him “nigger” enough. ( although never to his face). Whenever his name came
up in any conversation she never even used his name which was “DEL”, to her he was always “lazy nigger” or
“stupid nigger” and sometimes a “ stupid fucking nigger” but never “Del”. I tried to figure exactly what it was that
she thought he had done to her for her
to talk so badly about him, but I never knew. There were times when she had
referred to Charles as nigger, but that was usually around Jerry or some of the
other guys in the station. And I just figured she was trying to be one of the
gang. While her verbal attacks on Del seemed not only vicious but also
vindictive.
We had a another manager at the
Dover station now and what an Asshole he was. His name was Tim Keyser and he
was from the Philadelphia area. He was the kind of guy that was ALWAYS right no
matter how wrong he was or how stupid his idea was. And it seemed that nobody at the Dover station liked him. They
nicknamed him ..”maggot.” When
he first came to Dover he would constantly question me about the Wilmington
station, the people there and what had happened up there with me and about the drug scene there. And he would
tell me about the drugs and thefts at some of the stations he had been to also. At first I thought it was because he was
curious or interested. But after a while I realized it was because he was
pumping me for information. When we were alone he would always steer the
conversation to what happened at the Wilmington station. After awhile I
realized he was looking for me to say
something , anything , any excuse to get me fired. Because when I explained to
him that I really didn’t want to talk to him about the drugs and thefts at the
Wilmington station or the Philadelphia Ramp he began harassing me and
pressuring me, try to get me to do something wrong.
I had always done my job as best as
I could both up in Wilmington and also in Dover. Sometimes it involved going
above and beyond my regular duties. As a result some of my customers on my
route had written letters of appreciation
for my “extra efforts” in serving them. It is standard procedure for a
manager who receives these letters to call the courier into his office and give
him the letters while congratulating him for a job well done. This is usually
done within a day or two of the manager receiving them. One day after everyone
had left the Dover station and I was making copies of the CSS documents for the
OSI I happened to come across two of
these letters of appreciation. They
were on Tim Keyser’s desk and had been
received more than a month before. I
read them and made copies of them ( in case he destroyed them). The next day I
made a point of going into his office while he was sitting at his desk. As I
asked him several questions about
unrelated matters I let my gaze drift over to the letters.( I had left
them so that my name was visible ). Acting as though I had never seen them
before I asked, “Oh are those letters for me?”
He
looked at the letters and realized he got caught holding them , then said
something like ,” yeah here”, then he
got up and rushed out of the office. I didn’t care, I knew he didn’t like to
see me get praise, and I enjoyed watching him get upset because I did.
Business at the Dover station was
picking up and all of the courier’s were having trouble keeping up. Tim kept
pushing us all to do better but there was only so much that we could do ( you
can only exceed the speed limit by so much ). We were all speeding around
trying to make the deliveries and pickups
and get back to the station early but sometimes it was impossible. As it
was, I think ALL of us had radar
detectors in our trucks because we were speeding so much. Hell there was no way
we could make it without speeding. I ( and I’m sure most or all of the other
Dover couriers) went without lunch breaks most of the time. I once went about
three months without a lunch break even
though I drove the back roads above seventy miles an hour trying to make my
route commitments.
We
finally got another courier to help out on our routes. Well all of the other
routes did except mine. Even though my route had doubled in size since I had
taken it over, and even though Tim stayed on me to get back to the station
earlier I got no help. I had even challenged
him to go on my route and see if he could improve my times on several
occasions. But he always refused
because he knew he couldn’t, but he always gave me hell for not getting
back earlier. So my route was the only one that got no help from the new
courier who was supposed to help us ALL.
In fact after a few weeks Tim started adding new deliveries to my route
so I could help the other couriers make their 10:30am commitments, even though
he knew my route was already overloaded. I might as well have thrown away the
speedometer in my truck because the speed I traveled at was whatever the
fastest speed I could go regardless of the speed limit. It seemed like he just kept tightening the screws....
At times I got the feeling that
management had already told Tim to get all the information out of me that he
could then do everything he could to either make me quit or cause me to make
mistakes which I could be fired for. Today by looking back and from talking to other couriers across America,
many feel as I do. That it’s exactly what was going on in Dover. Many also feel
it is being done to them now.
One evening after we had gotten the freight ready for
the trip to the Philadelphia Ramp Tim came up to me and said that he would be
riding with me the next day. He said
that I was due for a performance review check ride. I usually kept my truck
very clean and well stocked of customer supplies but because I was going to be evaluated the next day I stayed
after work, on my own time, and cleaned and stocked my truck completely. When I
left the station my truck was spotless inside and out.
The mornings are hectic at the
station with the unloading of the incoming freight and sorting it for our
routes. I had been up in the CTV trailer unloading the freight. As soon as that
was done Tim said okay let’s go. So I jumped into my truck and began writing
down the mileage on the odometer. As I was doing that Tim looked all through my truck and commented about the dirty
coffee cups and candy bar and pastry wrappers in my truck and about how sloppy
my shelves were. I looked over and sure enough there were empty coffee cups in
my trucks and the pastry and candy bars wrappers too. “Wait a minute”, I said , “ you saw me clean out my truck
last night. I completely cleaned and stocked it before I left and everything
was neat and put away.”
“I
wasn’t paying attention .” was all he said.
‘I
have to mark you “down” for a dirty
truck,” he added.
“This
is a bunch of shit , somebody was in my truck,” I said, “and you know that I
don’t even drink coffee”. I was
thoroughly pissed but I knew there was nothing I could do about it. I drove
away and started my route.
It
was an average day except that I had a few less stops. And I didn’t speed as
much as I usually do. I wanted him to see what my route was like if you didn’t
speed.
I ran my route flawlessly and did my
deliveries and pickups as efficiently as was possible, after all I ran it
everyday. We returned to the station late. I knew we would because I didn’t
play NASCAR that day. As I pulled into the station I said to him, “ we’re late,
now you tell me how I can make it back here on time with this route as heavy as
it is, and remember I had about five less stops than I normally do”. “ I didn’t get back earlier today because I didn’t go over seventy miles an
hour,” I said to him. Tim never said a word , when I parked he got out
of the truck and told me to hurry and get my freight on the belt and then he
walked away. Like I said...He was an ASSHOLE.
Later that night after we had gotten the outbound freight loaded and were
doing our paperwork I asked several of
the couriers if they had seen anybody in my truck the night before. A couple of
the couriers told me that Tim took my truck up to the Wilmington station last
night. Then I realized that the coffee cups and the candy wrappers were his. He
had purposely left the trash in my truck so that he could count it against me
in my evaluation. When I confronted him about it he said... so what, that’s no
excuse.
That winter we had a bad snow storm which started on a Wednesday and continued throughout
the night into Thursday. I had gotten up at about 4:00AM because I knew the roads were bad and I had about
forty-five miles to travel if I were
going to make it. As it was I was the first one there even though it took me
nearly two hours to get to the station. On the way down I heard on the radio
that the Governor was going to declare a Snow Emergency. The snow was
continuing to come down yet somehow some of the other couriers who lived close
to the station made it in too, along with the freight which was a couple hours
late though I don’t even know how the driver made it.
Tim, who lived near the station also
made it in. He decided that we would try to make a few deliveries close to the
station because the roads were getting worse by the minute. That is all except
me, Tim went through my deliveries and picked out about three times what he had
set out for the other couriers. And to add to the problem, the deliveries he
had given me covered about four times the distance that the other couriers had
to travel. While the other couriers’ deliveries were in the City of Dover and
close to the station, mine were south of the city and out in the country where
some of the roads hadn’t been plowed at all. I had dressed for a blizzard so I
figured what the hell, I’ll show him I can do it. And I did. I made three times the deliveries that the
others did. I traveled far more miles than the others did. And I made it back
to the station safely. Of course I was the last one back to the station . About
an hour later then the others. It was about noon and I had kept in touch with the dispatcher and even he had
congratulated me and thanked me for staying out and doing a great job. Yet when
Tim came over to my truck he began hollering at me for staying out so late.
Even though he had given me the packages to deliver. I said to him,” if you
wanted me in earlier why didn’t you
call me on the phone which was in my truck or have the dispatch let me
know?’ He had no answer , there was
nothing he could say. He was just trying to get me mad so I would say or do the
wrong thing. I filled out my paperwork and went home without saying another
word to him.
Vacation...
Another way Tim Keyser harassed me was always screwing with my
vacation. It’s hard to plan a vacation with your wife and kids when you have an
ASSHOLE like him for a manager. I finally filed a G.F.T grievance against him for using my vacation
as a way of harassing and intimidating me.
BUT you know what...I never got an answer back so I’m going to let you read the G.F.T. and you decide. Here it is just as I filed
it .
Re: Timothy Keyser and Harassment ,Intimidation
and Provocation of Gary Rullo
To
Whom it may concern,
I am convinced that the actions of
my current manager Tim Keyser are intended to harass and intimidate me and that
he is doing all that he can to force me to resign or pressure me into making a
mistake which will result in my being fired or cause me to have an accident.
He has given me two (2) letters which I should not have received , and has
repeatedly tried to provoke me into an argument so that I will say something
which he can construe as disruptive so
he can fire me.
Three times I have put in for
vacation,
(1) The first time a month in advance and he
repeatedly told me I could have it.
Only to wait until two (2)
minutes before my vacation was to start
and tell me I couldn’t have it.
(2) Again I put in for vacation more than two
(2) weeks in advance and twice I asked him about it , only to be told that he
“didn’t know.” Then on the very day I had requested off for vacation... he
told me I couldn’t have it. Which was
pretty obvious by then.
(3)
Once more I put in for one (1) day off almost two weeks in advance
and he said, “probably”. Then he kept
putting me off until ...on the same day I had asked off for...he said I
couldn’t have that day off either.
The first time he refused my
vacation I thought he was trying to get a reaction from me but I wasn’t
sure, but the next two times I could se it in his eyes. They were staring at me as if to say...go ahead Gary say
something dumb, say anything at all.
PS
Don’t trash this GFT as has been done in the past.
Gary Rullo
And
of course I never got a response from this GFT.
Another time, I had been working at Federal Express for about four
years and had NEVER BEEN LATE, not once. And then one
morning on the way to the Dover station the fan belt on my personal vehicle
broke. I called into the station a half hour before my start time and informed
the “acting manager” at that time, that
I had car trouble and would be in as soon as I got it fixed. As it turned out I
was about two hours late getting to work.
The next day Tim gave me a written
warning letter for being late. I
couldn’t believe it. I had seen many people late a lot of times and nothing was
even said to them. Yet the first time I was EVER LATE in four years I got
a written warning.
On the bulletin board in the
station was a posting of the company policy stating company policy regarding
lateness. It came directly out of
Headquarters in Memphis.
It
Stated:
First time late in six month period.... no action
Second time late in six month period ...verbal reminder.
Third time late in six month period...written warning.
HELL... this was my first time late
in nearly four years and that ASSHOLE gave me a written warning for it.
God...where was a Union when I
needed one?
I went over to Tim and asked him to
walk over to the bulletin board with me. When he did I pointed to the posted
policy regarding lateness. I said, “according to this I don’t get a written
warning till I’ve been late three times in a six month period. I haven’t been
late ever before. How can you give me this warning letter?”
Tim just looked at me and smiled and
said, “ that’s the way I see it.”
Later that day I handed Tim a GFT (
Guaranteed Fair Treatment ) grievance letter. I told him I wanted to take the
issue to District Headquarters because I felt that he was harassing me. And that he wouldn’t be fair. I was used to
harassment by Tim but it seemed that every week he would try something else to
get me to make a mistake. Either out on my route or in my daily contact with
him. He would tighten a screw and if that didn’t work and I didn’t give him the
reaction he wanted , he would tighten it more.
I was running a route that was more than twice as big as when I
was initially trained on it and somehow I was making it work. It was so busy
that I once went three months without a lunch break But every chance he got
Tim would add another stop to it. Then if I had problems getting back to the
station early he would jump on me about
it. He was doing every thing he could to force me out or get me to screw up ...
and every body in the station knew it.
I felt sure that he had been told to
get me out anyway he could but I had to hold in there. I had things I needed to
get done before I left.
The investigation by OSI was nearly
set to go. They had decided to do a surveillance of CSS shipments at eight
different locations across the country. When I asked where they would be. I was
told that they would rather that I did not know. They suggested that I look at
it as the East, West, South ,North investigation. That way there wasn’t any
chance that I could do anything to interfere with the investigation in any way.
Well I could understand that. And it was okay with me. But I did insist that I
be kept informed of how it was going and how it went when it was finished. I felt that it was only fair. Of course what
agent Ackerman didn’t know was that every time I called to check on how the
investigation was going, I was recording our conversation on the progress of
the investigation. I knew what the results were going to be and I wanted to be
sure to get them on tape just to be sure no one changed their minds later. And
I called him often.
I did get my day at District Headquarters with Julio Colombo... and what a
joke that was. Of course my ( so called
) personnel representative was there. Julio sat in his big desk and asked,
“ what is the problem Gary?” I showed him the written warning about being late.
I explained to him that I had never ever been late at Federal Express before
and that I felt that the written warning was unfair. That the company had a
written policy that was posted on the bulletin board which stated there was to
be no action taken for the first time an employee was late. Then I showed him a
copy that I had made of the “posted “ company policy.
Julio Looked at the papers and
looked at the woman who was pretending to be “my personnel
representative”. Then he got a BIG
smile on his face and said, “ that’s the way we see it. The warning stands”.
“Even though I’ve only been late
once in four years,” I asked
“Yes,” he replied.
And he gave me a big SMILING
SMIRK.
As
I sat there in his office I realized why I had never gotten any help from the
district , none from the Region Office, and none from Headquarters in Memphis.
Federal Express didn’t hire management because of their honesty or fairness. On
the contrary I don’t believe Federal would ever hire anyone if they REALLY thought that person was REALLY
HONEST. I think Fred Smith only wanted SLICK LIARS who could and would do
anything that they had to do. People who espoused honesty and morality ...yet really
had none of their own. That’s my opinion and I doubt that I’m alone in those
thoughts.
So I thought , what the hell , let
me give Mr. Big Shot Julio Columbo something to remember me by.
I looked at him with his big SMUG
SMILE and said, “ Let me show you something Julio. Stand up for a minute please.”
Julio looked at me dumbfounded.
“Come on Julio, let me play you for
a minute and I’ll show you something you’ll never forget”.
He hesitated for a moment, I could
see that he thought that I might hit him. But that was not my intention. Oh he
probably would have loved to have me try something violent so he could fire me.
But I don’t have to resort to violence
to beat these assholes. “I’m not going to hurt you” I said, “just stand up.”
He must have believed me because he
slowly stood up from his chair. And I walked over close to him and asked him to
stand on the other side of his desk. It was obvious that he felt uncomfortable
and awkward . He was used to being the BIG SHOT and having others cower down to
him. Here I was just a lowly courier and I had taken over his office and his
desk in a matter of seconds. In reality he wasn’t that smart at all, he was probably dumber than most of those
under him and it was quite obvious that
day.
I sat down in HIS CHAIR and remarked how nice it was , that it must
have cost a lot of money. And I smiled at Julio...just so he would know what it
felt like.
I said, “now this is you Julio,
sitting at your desk not too far in the
future. The phone rings and you hesitantly pick it up. ( I picked up the phone
acting nervous and scared ) You sound
nervous /scared ..yes... yes... yes... Fred...yes
he told me ....yes Fred I know Fred.. Fred
I’m sorry ? Fred?... Fred ?... sighing...ohhh he hung up”. Then I put the phone back on
the receiver and hung my head and shook it like a man condemned to death. I
looked at JULIO and smiled ... “that
will be you someday soon Julio”.
They
all looked at each other trying to figure out if I was serious. Then the old
look of, “ nobody can hurt Federal
Express,” came over them. But Julio
still looked a little dumbfounded a little unsure. Whether or not he believed me or not, I was sure that he would
remember this day for a long time to come.
NO MATTER HOW STUPID HE WAS.
It just made me more determined to not let
them fire me or force me out until I was ready to leave. I had realized shortly
after the first GFT grievance letter that I had no future at Federal Express
but I was not leaving until my work with the government was finished. And I
didn’t want some DUMB ASSED manager thinking it was “him” that had caused me
to make a mistake that I could be fired for. Or that I quit because I couldn’t
take the pressure or the harassment that was forced on me almost daily. No, I
would stay until the investigation was finished and ready for prosecution. And
I didn’t want management to KNOW when I was going to resign. I wanted to do it
when they least expected it. When all was quiet with me and the company,
especially with that ASSHOLE TIM KEYSER
I waited about a week then called Special Agent Paul Ackerman at OSI
headquarters and he informed me that the surveillance of
CSS shipments had started. That agents had begun sending the shipments and were
secretly following the couriers who had
made the pickups to see just where the fraud began. He said that he hadn’t
talked to them yet and hadn’t seen any reports so he didn’t know anything yet.
But he did want me to call him the next day in case he wanted to ask me any questions
and at that time he would tell me what he had found out. “And please Gary”, he
said, be sure not to mention this to
anyone.”
He also
informed me that he and another agent had conducted surveillance on me and
another courier while we were handling CSS shipments. They followed
CSS shipments from Dover to Wilmington
and the Philadelphia Airport where Fedex’s ramp was. He wouldn’t say
what day it was. Just that he wanted to follow a shipment to see how it was
done at the Dover Air Force Base.
The next
day I went to work at the Dover station as though all was normal, just as I
always did. I had never told any of the other couriers in the station about the
CSS fraud investigation and didn’t intend to now.
Also Agent Ackerman had repeatedly
stressed to me that he wanted me to stay at Federal Express until the investigation was over and
was in the Attorneys hands in Washington for prosecution. He said that it
was very important that I not be fired by Federal Express.
The big investigation was going well
and so far everything that I had told them was proving true. Every CSS
shipment they followed so far was handled or should I say “mishandled” exactly as I said. They were very
pleased with how the investigation was going.
I asked Ackerman flat out, “ is
it fraud?”
And
his response was that, “ YES it is fraud, we clearly observed
Federal Express couriers violating the
CSS contracts. In every CSS test shipments we’ve followed so
far they did not follow the regulations
he stated. There was one or two more reports to come in yet though.
And of course we will have to wait to get all of the paperwork back to see
if Federal does in fact bill us for those CSS shipments. He went on to say
how he had been told by Federal Prosecutors to contact the Justice Department
in Washington and to coordinate with them for prosecution.
He and his office in Dover had been
in touch with the DEFENSE PROCURRMENT UNIT and they were all working together
on this. He had previously stated numbers to me regarding CSS shipments but I
wasn’t recording that conversation. So
since I was recording this one I asked him again about the numbers. He said
that someone at the Langely Military Base was told that Federal Express was
handling about five hundred CSS shipments a day on average. At $15.00 per
shipment that comes out to about $150,000 per month and rising quickly. And
that figure may not have included ALL of the Military Bases. And it certainly didn’t include ALL of the private business’s in America. That figure also didn’t include
the money they charged the Military just for the freight which was shipped by
the pound and which could run up to ten
times that amount and more.
It was shipments and money that they wouldn’t even have had if not for
the PHONY CSS SERVICE.
I wanted to get the numbers documented, and I felt that the best way
would be to record them. Just as I recorded many of the conversations with
Federal Express couriers and others in the past.
What Special Agent Ackermen and I
didn’t know was that top management at Federal Express had been doing evaluations of the Military CSS market and
in a memo put out in October 1998 they
had estimated it to have a potential of
$50,000,000.00 dollars.. Now that’s a lot of money for a service that
doesn’t exist. I found it typical of
Federal Express that they would later claim
the only reason they even handled the CSS shipments was because they
were doing the military a favor and that it wasn’t worth it.
x
x
PUT document of CSS potential here
x
x
x
Something else I had gotten into a
habit of doing was checking the computer at the Dover station in the morning. (
this is funny because later on you will see a letter Fred wrote to ABC which
says this station doesn’t exist ) I was looking at it one day and I
realized that the printouts often had requests for lost or stolen shipments. I
had always known that a lot of valuables were stolen from the shipments ( boy
did I ever ) but it was interesting to see it in print. So whenever I
got the opportunity I would make a copy of the requests for missing or stolen
valuables. Below are just a small sampling...
“trace agent says she was
desperate, the client was ready to eat her alive”
MISSING... ZIRCONIA SYNTHETIC DIAMANDS.....1 PKG. AB.#40024897482
MISSING...$ 314.00 CASH AND $750.00
CHECK AB.#0517015759 MISSING...$2000..
WATER PAINTING AB.#4361597774
MISSING...1 POUND OF ( ahem )
WHITE POWDER AND OPALS
AB#7450867152
MISSING...$8000.00 CASH FROM KENNY
TO SUSAN IN OVERNIGHT LETTER. *(NOTE)
SUSAN DID GET THE KEY AND NOTE SENT WITH THE O.L..
AB.#1652155676
MISSING ...PLATIUM GOLD PLATES ....AB.#408471781
OH...AND
HERE’S ONE TO PONDER...
“MISSING”.......RADIO ACTIVE
SHIPMENT FOR “PATIENT ON OPERATING TABLE” WAITING FOR SHIPMENT FOR BRAIN
SURGERY...
(
GOD I’M GLAD THAT WASN’T ME) ........................AB.0615005267
There were MANY that came through on
the computer. Of course I will let the reader guess what really happened to the
shipments. But in my experience as a courier these were typical of the things
that were being stolen and sold at
Federal Express. I wonder how many millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs go through Fedex daily and how
much of that is stolen and not reported?
Special Agent Ackerman and OSI were nearly through with
the investigation . He had made many of
the contacts with the Justice
department and pretty much had done his homework coordinating with the other
government enforcement branches. He was going for the kill and felt confident
that he would get his prosecution.
I had always known that when the investigation was finished. and was in
the Justice Department for prosecution I was going to go to the
Newspapers. I didn’t know for sure just
how much power Federal Express had or what connections they might have had
inside the military. I felt the best way to blow it open was through the
press. I had even hinted to Mr.
Ackermen that I would go to the newspapers,
and it seemed that I had done all that I could do to help the government
for now. And at that time I felt sure that if any of the military or other
branches of government were not exactly sure of just how Federal Express was
violating each and every CSS shipment that they would be in contact with me.
After all there were millions of dollars being stolen from the United States government
and the fraud was so easily proven with the DD1907 tally sheets. So I felt that
all was in good hands.
It was a rare time that Tim Keyser wasn’t on my back at the
station. I guess that he was temporally distracted from harassing me. A RARE TIME
INDEED.
So I put in a few applications for
employment. Looking back, it had been
made quite obvious to me back when I first refused the letter for
“disruptive behavior” that my future at Federal was to be short lived. The fact
that I had survived this long was nothing short of a miracle. I owe an awful
lot of my strength to my wife. She knew that I was going through hell at work.
And though she wanted me to quit many times, she also knew that I wasn’t one to
back down or run away. She believed in me.
There were many, many nights that I laid in bed at night and watched the
sun come up ...because I couldn’t sleep. I was always trying to figure out why
management at Federal Express would allow ALL the wrongs to continue. I had
worked for major corporations before but I had never seen such abuse of power
and corruption as existed at Federal
Express. Management at Federal Express
lied so much that they couldn’t even look you in the eye. They were
rotten low life and I had to put up with so much lying. All the way from Memphis to the Liberty
District Headquarters to Wilmington and even to Dover.
But it was time to leave now. The
investigation was completed . Besides I knew that as soon as the story came out
in the paper I would be fired. And it was going to be in the newspapers.
I had put in an application with Air
Products a company in Maryland. It was only about twenty minutes from my home
and the pay and benefits was about the same. They had called me and asked me to
come in for an interview. After the
interview I was hired. I
gave Tim Keyser a written two week
notice of my resignation. He was shocked to say the least. I had
withstood all his harassment and bullshit, and to be honest I think it may have
been him who gave up. He had tried everything and somehow I had managed to
survive. Somehow I had grown stronger and it was he who grew weaker. The
couriers in the station looked at him
as an idiot. He spent a lot of effort trying to break me or make me screw up
and he couldn’t. Every situation he
created just made him look more like a fool. It was so apparent when at a
company Christmas dinner the couriers at the station presented me with an award
for most effort in the station. And...while his date ( a very young girl ) was
standing next to him, they gave him a Christmas present. A T-shirt with
the name “ MAGGOT “ written on it. It was what they thought of him and his
treatment of not only me but also the rest of the station. He was furious. They “laughed at him”
when he opened it. (not with him )
Merry Christmas ASSHOLE
Also
I think he may have realized it when we were at District Headquarters with
Julio Columbo. He was no match for me...not because I was so great ( I was just
a regular guy ) but rather because he
was so weak. He and others in management had tried many times in many different
ways to intimidate me and put fear in me,
I had survived and even grown stronger. They had used their positions of
power and numbers in an effort to break the spirit of a common working man and
..they had failed. I had beaten them at their game with no help from anyone in
the company ( except the moral support of those in the Dover station
) . It is clear to me now that without
their positions of power the many
couriers under them would be more than a match for management every time.
After I turned in my notice I worked
one week and then was offered my second week’s pay without coming to work.
Management was afraid I would tell my customers all the bad things about
Federal. I thought about it and decided sure why not. They were too late
anyway, I had already told my customers
what Assholes they were. And also to look in the papers and on TV for Federal
Express and a scandal.
And
I began to enjoy working again.
Agent Ackerman called to asked me
how the “new job” was going. He seemed genuinely concerned and after we talked
for awhile he said that he wanted to meet with me. He just wanted to bring me
up to speed on where the investigation was going and what to expect. His career
would get a boost after this and he
said that it was in large part due to all the documentation I had collected and the information and help
which I had given him and the other investigators.
So after some more talk on the
phone, we decided to meet at a Denny’s restaurant in New Castle. The same one
that I had met Stephanie Seberg and her
bodyguard at. It seemed ironic that shortly after she and I met there that she
resigned. Now I was meeting Paul Ackerman there and it was shortly after I had resigned from Federal Express..
He brought along another
investigator that I had met previously during the early stages of the
investigation. Somehow I got the feeling that I had made a friend. He and the
other investigator seemed very appreciative of the help I had given them. I
explained to them that even though I had a lot of bad experiences at Federal
Express and would never forget the rotten things they had done to me I would have gone to ( the AFOSI ) even if things had been good at Federal,
because no matter what ...it was wrong to betray your country. I explained to
him that I didn’t like defrauding and
betraying the U.S. Military. That they are the soldiers who protect us and die
for us. It was serious stuff.
I said that I realized that it happens sometimes but I
get a bad taste in my mouth when I think about it. That it was wrong for a
company like Federal Express, which claims to be such a great American success
story and tells people how great a company they are, to go out and commit a fraudulent act such as the CSS service against the United States. It was
more than wrong, it was despicable. I explained to them that if the AFOSI didn’t go after the
investigation I would have gone to the FBI or whoever else I had to. We talked a little more and they
thanked me again and then it was time to say goodbye.
Probably the most disgusting thing I did come to
realize from early on in the investigation was that hundreds probably thousands
of Federal Express employee’s all
across America were knowingly and willfully betraying the United States. They
knew it just as Helen did. They betrayed America for a few dollars. And I’m
sure they thought they would never get caught. From the courier who picks up a
CSS shipment, right up into management. They’re not fit to live in America.
So now it was time to hit the newspapers.
Through
research I determined that the Philadelphia Inquirer would be a good bet to do
the story. And it was. I called a reporter at the Inquire and talked to
him for awhile. He asked a lot of questions and I tried to
answer them as best I could. At the conclusion of the phone conversation I was asked to come into their office and
could I please bring some of the documentation.
The reporter I talked to was Mack
Reed. His office was in downtown Wilmington, Delaware even though the
Inquirer’s main office was in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.. He job was covering the news in Delaware. And he
was very interested. I took a bunch of 1907’s
and the regulations for handling the CSS shipments along with a few
delivery records. It took awhile for me to get him to understand what was going
on but he soon began to understand. Then he got a look of “I can’t believe Federal Express would do this kind of thing “. But the 1907’s didn’t lie. And I had made
copies of the regulations to leave with him to review along with a bunch of actual 1907’s to compare.
After he had time to understand the
whole process of how the CSS shipments were supposed to be handled and of how
they were really being handled he gave Helen Wilson ( the courier who had
trained me on the Dover route ) a call on the phone. To be honest I would have
bet that she would have lied and said that the CSS shipments were always
handled properly. But as I said earlier...Helen was too stupid to lie. She told him that many times the CSS
shipments were left unguarded at the Blue Hen Mall and other places while she
went inside to do deliveries or shop. But understand She wasn’t the only one
doing it. All over America Federal Express couriers and other employees were
routinely treating these shipments like nothing more than common freight.
At any rate Mack Reed must have felt
that this was a good story because he made an appointment with his editor to go
over the case. The Philadelphia Inquirer did some preliminary investigations on
their own. And held meetings with the
higher ups to go over the legal aspects of the story. It took a couple of days
but Mr. Reed assured me that they would
do the story.
In the meanwhile...
Fedex found out ( probably because they were contacted by the Inquirer
) that I had gone to government
investigators and now had gone to the Philadelphia Inquire to tell the truth
about their phony CSS service.
So Federal Express ( I will
always believe it was Fred Smith though I will never be
able to prove it ) had one of their big shot corporate lawyers call my small town lawyer. Federal’s lawyer told my lawyer to tell me... to keep my
mouth shut about the CSS stuff or they
would put my family out in the street.
My lawyer called my wife and I and asked us to come to his
office in town. When we arrived he sat us down and told us what Federal
Express’s lawyer had said. He said that I had to be careful because
Federal had a lot of money and power.
And that they could make it very bad for me and my wife. He said something to
the effect that ...these are not nice people, they will do whatever it takes to
shut you up.
Before he finished speaking to us my
wife began crying and got hysterical. She said that she didn’t want to lose our
home. She said, “these bastards have been screwing my husband for years. They
have put him through hell and made our life miserable. All he wants to do is
tell the truth and do what’s right and these bastards are going to take our
home away. They know they’re cheating the government, why are they trying to
punish us?”
She was hysterical now and scared.
She was afraid we would lose our home. Afraid of what Federal Express would do
to me for going to government investigators and telling the truth about the
phony CSS service. I felt so bad for her. I was trying so hard to do the right
thing and it might wind up costing my
family our home and my children’s
future not to mention our sanity.
Yet
as I held her and tried to reassure her that it would be okay, that somehow we
would survive. I began to get mad. I thought about the times management had
lied to me. The many times they had harassed me and forced
me to put up with their shit. I had two small kids at home and a mortgage payment
to make no matter what. And they held that over me. I thought about the
snobbish attitude that so was so common among Federal Express
management. And how they loved to throw their weight around. Fairness
was never an issue with them, just money and power.
And I thought ...this is still
America. These bastards will have to kill me to shut me up. I will go to every state in America if I
have to, to tell the truth.
FUCK FEDERAL EXPRESS and FUCK FRED SMITH TOO... THE LYING SON OF A BITCH.
I told my lawyer that I had taped
the conversation with the AFOSI investigators and that on the tapes even they
had said that it was fraud. So if Federal
was going to sue me they would have to sue the government too. Because I
was saying the same thing government investigators were saying.. He was still
concerned and I’m sure there was reason to be. As I’ve come to learn more about
Federal Express and Fred Smith I can very well understand his concerns.
When we left the lawyers office I
tried to console my wife, she was crying hysterically and very upset. I needed
something to pick up her spirits, something to make her believe that we were
not totally alone. I explained to her
that Mack Reed had wanted to see me and go over a few things about the
CSS shipments. She was still a little bit shaken but somehow through all this
she still believed in me.
Mack Reed and his editors at the
Inquirer had been working hard on the story and from their research evidently
they had come to realize that what I had told them was true. As my wife and I walked into his office Mack got up from his desk with a big smile
on his face. He shook my hand and I introduced him to my wife. He said, “ Gary
I have to be honest with you, when you first came into my office I thought that
you might be exaggerating somewhat but everything that you told me is right on
the money. We have done quite a bit of investigating on our own. And every
thing that you said about the CSS service is true”.
I looked at my wife and for the
first time in awhile she had a smile on her face. I had never told her about
the particulars of the CSS stuff. Only that I was working with the government
investigators. So she never had any real knowledge about CSS and had never been
involved in it in any way. But she believed in my judgment and my honesty. So
she had always stood at my side. “ So is there going to be a story”, I asked.
Mack
never even hesitated and replied that yes there most certainly will be. It would
take a few weeks to finish and schedule but there will be a story.
I told him that we had just left my
lawyer’s office and what he had told me about Federal Express’s threats to put my family out on the street
for telling the truth.. I explained to him that what I had said about the CSS
service being fraud was 100% true and that I was not going to back down.
His response was that the top
editors and the legal department of the Philadelphia Inquirer was convinced
that what I said was true, and that they were going forward with the story. So
if Federal Express was going to sue me, they would have to go through the
Inquirer first. It was a real relief to have somebody stand
behind me for a change. It was a good feeling to have someone else stand up to
Federal Express and say, “what
you’re doing is wrong , and you’re not
going to get away with it.” I sure as
hell can’t stop ALL of their wrongs but this was one I was going to do my best
to stop. Mack told us to have faith and things would be okay and that the
Inquirer would not back down from doing the story.
I
cannot print the exact newspaper article because of copyright laws.
However...
The
headlines read....
Courier’s Surveillance is Questioned...and the story went like this
Last July 18, Fedex charged the
government for Constant Surveillance Service for shipping classified military
computers to the Air Force Base in Dover , De.
Once in Dover , a military cargo
plane was to airlift the computers to Germany for use in developing a Classified
NATO weapons systems.
Records show however , that in
Federal Express’s custody, surveillance
of the computers was anything but constant.
Two of the 11 packages were lost
for two days and company records show that the rest were left temporally in an
unguarded truck...in violation of Defense Department rules.
The Air Force now is
investigating allegations that the
service ...which is available to the public and is estimated to bring Federal Express $8.5 million a year in defense contracts alone...Is a FRAUD.
Dangerous and sensitive military
cargo sent through CSS sometimes is left unattended and treated no
better than common freight, in violation of government regulations according to Federal Express
documents , former Federal Express couriers and CSS customers.
Federal Express officials deny the allegations and have
declined requests to be interviewed.
Not notified of inquiry
“Our only response is that Federal Express has not
been notified by the U.S. Air Force of an investigation and should the Air
Force have a concern , we would expect them contact us directly,” said Federal
Express spokeswoman Shirlee Finley.
“Constant
Surveillance means exactly that,” said Jim Crawford, branch manager for the
General Services Administration . “It
does not mean you leave it somewhere, just walk off and leave it unattended.”
The article goes on to say that
according to Defense Department regulations and “written” Federal Express
policy the CSS service should work like this:
A
courier picks up a package from the shipper, attaches a Signature and Tally
sheet to it, he has to sign the tally sheet and takes it directly back to the
local Federal Express depot without doing any other stops. If any stops are
made , the courier must stay within 100 feet and within clear view of the
truck.
En route, each Federal Express worker, handling the package also must sign.
Thus, properly handled CSS packages arrive at it’s destination with at least
seven or eight Federal Express signatures, said three former couriers. Federal
Express charges an extra $15.00 per package for the service.
The story goes on
about other violations and courier statements
a)
The NATO computers arrived with only one (1) signature and part of the
shipment was lost.
b)
Paul Goodman who quit Federal Express and who did service the Dover Air
Force Base said that the CSS service was “a joke.”
c)
Helen Wilson, the courier who
trained me on the Dover route, said she was never told to drive a CSS shipment
back to the depot from the shipper and that she sometimes took hour
long lunch breaks away from the truck. It’s handled like a “normal
package” in the way we ride around with it”.
d) One time 79 pounds of explosives shipments
were left unguarded in the Federal Express depot for a whole weekend. The depot
had NO burglar or fire alarm, no containment cage for CSS freight as required
by the Defense Department and only a plate glass front door with a simple three
button combination lock.
There were many more violations
listed in the news account and references to statements of members of congress
had made calling for a broader investigation of the CSS service.
After the story broke I received a
lot of phone calls about it. They came
at ALL hours of the day and night.
One came from a man who said he was a cargo handler at the
Philadelphia ramp. He told me that after the newspaper story
Fedex management came in and
held a class at the ramp to explain what a CSS shipment was. He said
that until then he had never even heard of a CSS shipment and neither
did anyone else there. It was all new to them. He said they
were told to keep quiet about it and not to talk about the “CSS class”.
He also told me about the guys selling a white powder at the ramp. He said it
was very open and that they would just go into the bathroom and do the “white
powder”. And that the guys who were
buying it were treated better than those who didn’t. Most of the guys there’s
were doing it he said. I told him to just do like I did...”just do his job and
try not to get involved or else he might lose his job,” which he said he
needed.( been there done that )
There were other callers who said
they were couriers and that yes they had always known that the CSS was just a
way to get people to pay extra money
for a service that didn’t exist. Most pretty much agreed that it was a rip-off.
And wished me well but to be careful because Fred Smith would probably come
after me.
Then there were other callers that
didn’t want to discuss the particulars of the CSS service. They called to tell
me that Fred Smith and Federal Express
would give me what I deserved
for “ ratting on Federal Express.”
Some callers complained that I was going to hurt the “profit sharing”
program. That was pretty much the reason that I had been given for committing
fraud in the first place when my manager Colin Baines told me that the more
money in Fred Smith’s pocket , the more that we got, in the way of profit sharing. So I guess they were saying that if
we didn’t cheat the customers and the government then we weren’t going to get
ANY or very little profit sharing. I
would ask those callers, “so are you saying it’s OKAY to defraud and betray your country for a few dollars of profit
sharing?” And they generally responded
something like “fuck you asshole” and some did in fact say that it was OKAY to DEFRAUD the U.S. Government.
Some of the calls were just pure
harassment calls of hanging up when I or my wife answered the phone and
sometimes just a. “ fuck you” or a “asshole” and a number of “YOU”RE
GONNA DIE” threats followed by a
quick hang up. YEP these were the kind
of Fedex people I knew. Rather than
admitting that “yes we were screwing the hell out of America” they would prefer to harass and threaten the
one man who was honest and who would stand up and tell the truth. They reminded
me of the NAZI SOLDIERS that,
after Germany fell and they were being
tried for war crimes, they said that they were “just doing what they were
told.” And for all I know, maybe that’s
exactly why Federal hired that kind of
people in the first place. They would do whatever they were told to do, no
matter what. And they seemed to have
little regard for morals and ethics.
No matter how you thought about it, these people certainly had no
loyalty to America.
Probably the calls that bothered me
the most and really did have a lasting effect on me even today were the “DEATH
THREATS.” A number of the calls said that “one day I would open my car door or
start my car and I would be blown to pieces”.
Or that I wasn’t going to get away with squealing on Federal
Express. I would be taken out, my life
was over so I had better get my affairs in order. It affected me a great deal. For a very long time every
morning and every night, and just about every time I got into my car I would
stand away as far I could and open the door.
And I would stand outside of my
car when I started it (thank God I had
automatic rather than stick shift ). In
the morning before I left for work I would open the doors to my wife’s car and
stand outside while I started it before
I left for work in the morning. I had
two small kids and I was afraid that someone from Federal Express would put a bomb in it and kill my wife and
kids. I tried not to tell my wife too
much about the death threats because she was already upset enough. Just to be
very careful. Both of us were having
trouble sleeping and a normal healthy life was impossible because of the
threats, both directly by the Federal Express lawyers and the cowardly Federal
Express employees who would call to harass and threaten my wife and I.
But the more I thought about all
the threats , the more determined I got.
I had tried to find out if the
Military Traffic Management Command (
MTMC ) had stopped Federal from
handling CSS shipments yet. I had figured the newspaper story would bring the
fraudulent act to their attention. But I couldn’t get any information either
way. Some of the callers, the ones who agreed that the CSS service was in fact
a fraud, had suggested that I take the story to 20-20. That I shouldn’t count
on just one local newspaper story to stop the CSS service. They said Federal Express had connections.
Federal Express had
threatened me and my family when I went to the Newspapers when they knew damn
well I was telling the truth. Were they going to try to cover up their illegal
fraud? The best way to stop a cover-up
would be to go on national TV I thought.
Too many times in the past I had seen
Fedex management lie and get away with it. I believed then and even more so
today that they have no morals and no scruples, they were just a bunch of “con men” out to get all they can in any way
they can. It is just a shame that so many good men and women buy into their
bullshit.
So I wrote a letter to the people at
20-20 on ABC. I told them about the
fraud and drugs at Federal
Express. It didn’t take them long to
get back to me.
The person who contacted
me was Meredith White she was the executive producer for 20-20 and she wanted me to tell
her a little more about the fraud.
Which I did. Then I asked her if she had access to the Philadelphia
Inquirer. And to my surprise she said that it was one of a half dozen papers
they read everyday. So I told them to
look at it and get back to me if they were interested.
She called me back the next
day. She said they were very much interested in doing a story on Federal
Express. We set a date and she said
they were going to have one of their top producers meet with me. His name was
Chris Harper and he was coming down from New York. He was coming to my house and he was going to have dinner and go
over the documents I had collected.... imagine a big time producer from ABC at
my house.
The next day I made a few calls to
some to friends and relatives to retrieve the documents I had stashed away. Out
of fear for my family’s safety I never kept them in my house for more than a
few days.
An older acquaintance of mine who was knowledgeable in matters of
security had advised me to make numerous copies of each document and to
“always” keep them in at least three different locations which I did and still
do today. He explained to me that I was going to be taking millions of dollars
from Federal Express, which was a very large and powerful company. And that
they had already shown their disregard for the law by defrauding the U.S.
Government. He said they were the kind
of company that would come into my house to get evidence that could cause them
great financial damage or embarrassment even if it meant harming my family in
the process. He cautioned ,”with a company like Federal Express you never know how far they will go.” You must think about the safety of your wife
and kids he cautioned. That’s why even
today I keep several copies of everything on Federal Express in several
different locations.
I HOPE YOU HEARD THAT
FRED.... Don’t even think about
it.
Before I met with Christ Harper I
had an interesting conversation with Tony Giamboy a former courier for
Federal too. He had just recently been
fired from Federal Express for stealing
from City Bank in New Castle, Delaware. ( he was not a close friend )
He said, “ they really railroaded
me, they set me up like a bowling pin”. “They put an ultra violet dye all over
my records and did an illegal search and seizure of his house.” . According to Tony they upset his wife so bad
that she got hysterical and he had to take her to the hospital for treatment.
He said that a Federal Express investigator by the name of Hubble “shook” his hand and put the ultra
violet dye on his hand. Then the Hubble guy put Tony’s “right” hand under the
light and there was little spects of dust on it but none on his left hand. Tony
said that the Hubble guy told Tony that
there was dye on his face but he looked in the mirror and he said he couldn’t see it. Tony said that there was
a lot of theft in the Wilmington station and that they needed a fall guy. (
flashback to Julio Columbo, Stephanie Seberg )
Tony said that the Federal
Express investigators knocked on his
door and said to his wife, “do you mind if we come in?” as they were walking through the door. Tony said his wife said, “ I guess not since you’re already
in.” He said, “ the investigators
then “ran” up into his bedroom , they
were looking for his uniform for that day.
There was no dye on that uniform,” he said. Tony said that after talking to a lawyer he was told that there
was little that he could do. ( well
that was Tony’s version of what
happened )
In the conversation Tony did say that he had handled CSS shipments and
that he had “NEVER” seen a CSS handled properly.
Another person I talked to was a Paul Oberg. He had been a courier at
the Wilmington station but left shortly before I was hired on. Paul had worked
for Federal Express for eight years. He
told me several things that I found very interesting.
After I had been attacked by Leto in the station and had gotten a
“letter for disruptive behavior “ I
filed a “GFT” Guaranteed Fair Treatment”
grievance. And Al Ferrier ( my
manager at the time ) told me that he had torn it up and thrown it away. So I wrote a letter to the Liberty District Director and asked for an
investigation. One of the things I put in the letter was that Mike Mitchell had
a serious Drinking Problem and that I had seen him drunk in the station several
times. At that time the district director was Dave Bronzack and he said that he
had “never “ heard anything about Mike’s
drinking problem. Yet In my
conversation with Paul Oberg, Paul said that he had filed similar charges
against Mike Mitchell when he was a courier and Dave Bronzack was in the
Liberty District Office and that Bronzack
was well aware of the charges against Mike then and he did know. Paul
also told me that he even went to
Regional Director Dave Spina about Mitchell and that Spina just told him
that he would look into it. But nothing ever happened to Mike as far as he
knew.
Paul Oberg also said that if he had pressed the issue of illegal
drugs in the Wilmington station he would have taken out over half of the people
there and the number of druggies in the Wilmington station was actually
probably closer to three quarters of the people there. He said that Al
Ferrier and Jerry Salomone ( who was a manager at the time ) was using and
dealing drugs in the station when he worked there and that he had watched them do drugs. According to Paul
Oberg... Jerry Salomone and Al Ferrier
were ALWAYS BUYING and SELLING and DEALING in DRUGS in the station.
He also related that he saw AL Ferrier steal a bunch of concert
tickets, he said he was right next to Al when Al took the tickets and he saw
Al take them. I told him about Al being a Federal Express manager
until he got drunk and nearly killed a girl when he slammed into her
car. That the accident happened a few
hundred feet from the Federal Express
parking lot. That Al was just leaving the station and that he had
been drunk at work .
Paul told me what I had already come to believe. He said that if
you got all the druggies in the station fired your life wouldn’t be worth a
plugged nickel. He said that if you exposed a bunch of the guys in the station
.....”well they’re all fucked up druggies and they’ll come after you and you may not live to see your kids
grown.” He said , “they wouldn’t stop
at ruffing you up, they would get you and then worry about the consequences
later.”
Thank God that Stephanie
Seberg was smart enough to run away.
It was nothing new to me, many times I had seen them snorting cocaine
and smoking pot in the station. And
Jerry and Al had tried to get me to bring them packages from Federal
Express shipments that I thought contained illegal drugs. So they could steal them for their personal use. And even when Al Ferrier tried to sell me
the “eight ball” of cocaine that he
said he had stolen the night he gave me a ride home.
But it wasn’t just the drugs. There
was always thefts going on, not only in the Wilmington station by the couriers
there, but also by the couriers and drivers who came into the Philadelphia ramp
too. I couldn’t count the times I had been offered ( to buy or trade) valuables
by others at the ramp. Even computers, TV’s, stereo’s, you name it. If money
and morals were no object you could buy most anything there.
And it wasn’t just the Philadelphia
ramp either. While working at the Philly ramp we always heard about the thefts
at the Newark, NJ station.
There was the time I was at Long
Beach Island, New Jersey. I was sitting with my wife and kids on the beach.
After a while a guy and his family came over near us and spread out a blanket.
At first I didn’t pay any attention to them but then I realized he was wearing
a Federal Express hat. After a while I got up and went over to ask if he worked
at Federal and he said yes in New York. He actually lived in north Jersey but
worked in New York. I believe he said he worked in distributing supplies.
As we began to talk about Federal
Express he started talking about “all” the thefts in the New York stations. And
how it was impossible to stop. He said that the furriers and jewelers were
always hit the hardest. And that they ( furriers and jewelers ) were having a
hard time with their insurance companies because of the thefts by Federal
Express couriers With the computer stores next. He said it was “rampant” and
that the couriers there were making big money from thefts. “You just can’t stop
the couriers”, he stated.
Meanwhile...
I had to get ready for Chris Harper
and 20-20 so after collecting the
documents I organized them in my dining room and set them out on the table. I
looked at all of them and thought to myself , “ this should not only prove
fraud but also show how it was done.” I
not only had the DD1907’s which showed
a lack of signatures and non surveillance but also the rules and regulations
for handling CSS shipments.
But it was the “DD1907’s which told the story. They were the
“proof” that Federal Express was not
giving the Constant surveillance Service which they were billing the military
and other government branches millions of dollars for. Not to mention the
private and business sectors.
No wonder they could grow so fast in
size and revenue when so many millions of
their revenue was “stolen” money. Money they would never had gotten
except for their lies and “phony service” which didn’t exist. For years they
had taken in millions of dollars which they didn’t “earn”. It was “stolen money” ... stolen from the American
people. And it wasn’t just a one time thing, it was something that was done
year after year and may have continued even today had they not been stopped.
I also had delivery records and
government “bills of laden”
which described what was being shipped
( sometimes ) . You never knew for sure just what was in the packages
regardless of what the bill of laden said.
Just that it was sensitive and classified military shipments. And according to a few servicemen at the
Dover Air Force base ... “you really didn’t want to know.”
Chris Harper came to Delaware by way of train. He said that he
hated to fly and the only time he did was if
he had no other choice. He arrived at my house in the early afternoon
and after introductions and small talk he immediately wanted to see what
documentation I had. So I showed him my
dining room table. It had been opened up so that it would seat fourteen people and I had it completely covered
with documents. They were stacked neatly in rows. I had arranged them in chronological order. The rules and
regulations were set separately along
with some of the warnings about some of the shipments. I also had several piles of tape recordings
which corroborated many of the things I told him. They contained recordings of
conversations with Special Agent Ackerman and numerous tapes of current and
former couriers talking about thefts and illegal drugs from Fedex shipments.
Chris Harper was very sharp. I would
even say “extremely sharp.” He very
quickly understood how the CSS shipments were supposed to be handled. And just
as quickly learned how they were mishandled.
He was a quick study. You told
him once and he got it right the first time. There was no need to repeat
yourself with this guy. As he was going
through the documents my wife came into the room and said that dinner was
ready. So we went into the kitchen and
set down to a Pot Roast dinner.
During dinner he asked about our
children and how they were doing. We had left them with friends so they
wouldn’t be in the way or disrupt conversations. I figured that if 20-20
was going to send a producer to my house to do a story the least I could
do was give him my undivided attention. And an atmosphere where he could concentrate on the documents
I had collected. He said that he had
been ABC’s correspondent in Italy for a number of years and had just recently returned to the states. He was a
pleasant man. Not at all cocky or pretentious.
He was there to do his job and
it was obvious that he not only took it
seriously but was also quite good at it.
After dinner he mentioned that he
would like to take a walk around the neighborhood to stretch out a little
and would I go with him? So off we went to walk through my neighborhood. I lived in a typical suburban
development. There are about sixty
single family homes in my development. With a few clusters of townhouse close
by. The homes are well taken care of with neat well trimmed lawns so I was
proud to show Chris around. The houses are setup on cul de sac’s with eight
houses on each cul de sac. It keeps it
safe for the little kids to play on the streets as there are no throughways in
front of the homes. So we walked in and out of all the cul de sac’s then returned
to my house. It was a walk that my wife and I had taken a thousand times. Many
of those walks were with our children.
Once back in my house he began going
over the documents again. He had given it a lot of thought and had pretty much
made up his mind now. It became obvious
when he began complimenting me on my abilities of collecting data. He stated that in all his time in gathering
information for news he had never seen such a collection of documents. He said
that most times when he does research on a story he’s lucky to have one tenth
of what I have. And it can make it difficult to make a decision as to whether
or not 20-20 will do the story. But with what I have there is no doubt that
they will. He said that they never make
a decision without a meeting to discuss it as a group. But this time he is
certain that they will do this story.
He said, “ Gary, I have never seen such a complete job of collecting
evidence...you have truly done a great job. And I have never told that to
anyone before.” My wife who was in the
kitchen cleaning up and was obviously listening to the conversation asked, “ do
you really mean that Chris, did he really do that good of a job?” And without hesitation Chris responded, “
yes Dot, your husband did great. He’s
going to be on 20-20 in front of thirty million people.”
My wife and I had decided long before that she would stay away
from anything involving Federal Express. There were just too many druggies and
thieves there and we figured that even if someone came after me and somehow I
got killed, at least she would still be alive to raise the kids. That may sound corny or dumb but it is something
you have to prepare for, and try to remember, I didn’t have twenty high paid
lawyers advising me.
So even though this was my project
it was obvious that she was happy for me. At Federal Express they had always
covered up the truth with lies. Somehow I had found not only a government
investigator who believed me and a major newspaper with national recognition
but now...a national television show with thirty million viewers was going to
let me tell the truth about Federal Express and their lying and cheating. That
should stop the CSS.
Chris Harper asked me if I had made copies for him to take back to New
York with him . Hell I had made a lot of copies of everything. And the ones I
had on the table and in my dining room were
just for him to take back. As I packaged them up for him to take back,
we went over a few more details. He said that since the story was so good and I
had collected so much documentation he felt that this might be a story for Tom
Jerrial. Maybe even the feature
story of the segment. But that he would have to wait till he got
back to New York to his office to be sure.
I drove him back to the train station in Wilmington for the trip home.
It had been a good day.
A few days later Meredith White of
20-20 called to confirm that they were definitely going to do the story. Tom
Jerrial would do it and it was going to be the feature story of the segment.
They would begin getting things ready and could I manage to get off work for a
few days while they were shooting ? Oh course I could I said. She said that she
would get back to me about what days I would need off.
I talked to my boss at Air Products
where I was working at the time. I explained the situation to him. And he said
sure. I got the feeling he didn’t think much of Federal Express’s phony CSS service.
Chris had asked me if I
had any “old” courier uniforms to wear for the interview. And I
remembered that when I resigned I had turned in my Federal Express ID badge to my manager. I had also taken in
my uniforms but he said I might as well keep them because they were mine. And
that I could do with them as I pleased. He only wanted my ID badge. So I told
Chris that yes I had them but wouldn’t Federal
get pissed if I wore them on
TV. And he replied that ABC would take
care of any problems if they came up.
The initial shooting took place in the
Hotel Dupont in Delaware. When I arrived the crew was already setting up. Chris
Harper introduced me to Tom Jerrial. I
had thought that Tom Jerrial would be a
man who kept his distance but he wasn’t. He was very friendly and pleasant. While he appeared articulate
and quite professional he was also
pleasant and quite humorous. His world was much bigger than mine and yet he
made me feel comfortable and at ease. Chris Harper said that it was because Tom
truly enjoyed his work. I was also introduced to the sound, camera and lighting
crews. Before long they were ready to shoot.
The shooting consisted mostly of Tom and I sitting in chairs facing
each other with cameras behind each other’s
chair to record the conversation. In the first part he asked me questions
from a prepared script and I answered as best I could. It is a lot harder to
respond to a question when a camera is on you than most would think. Afterwards
they turned the cameras on Tom and he again went through the questions so that
afterwards they could splice the interview together. It was interesting.
That evening I went with Chris
Harper to rent out a white van so they could begin filming in Dover while I
drove around. The next morning it would
be off to Dover with the whole crew.
Once we were in Dover the camera
crew set up the lighting in the van and got the microphones ready so that Tom
Jarriel and I could be recorded while we talked. There were many shots taken
while I drove around the streets of
Dover but also a lot were taken of stops that I had made while carrying
CSS shipments.
One stop was the Blue Hen Mall. It
had been a regular stop on my route and every time I made it the CSS shipments
in my truck had to be left unguarded. The delivery was on the second floor of
the mall so every time I made the stop I would be away from my truck for at
least ten minutes and sometimes more.
It was the way the others couriers had
done it before me and also the way that I had been trained and told to do it.
After we were wired for sound and
the cameras were set up I was directed to walk across the parking lot while Tom
walked beside me and asked me questions about the stop. How many times did I
come here and how long was I inside the mall etc.
Then we traveled to the Department
of Transportation building which was
also a regular stop on my route. And more footage was shot.
We traced a good bit of my route in
Dover and after lunch we started shooting again. One of the places we shot was
a school. It was an elementary school which I had made many pickups at while CSS shipments were in my truck, some
of them explosives. At least once and
maybe several times I pulled up to the school with about 100 pounds of
explosive devices in my truck. And while it may or may not have broken any
laws, I really didn’t think that it was a good idea.
I believe it was on the second
morning that Chris Harper decided to shoot a scene at the Federal station in Dover.
Chris told me that Federal Express
had repeatedly refused his request for an interview. He had gone through every
channel he could and still they kept putting him off. So today he was going to try to interview the manager at the
Dover station. I had worked there more than a year so I knew that the manager
and a CSA (customer service agent) would be there and maybe some couriers.
Chris went into the station first just to make sure of who would be there and
to check out the inside of the station
for the camera crew. When he came back he said that the manager and a
CSA and maybe a courier were inside. Yet when he came back a few minutes later
they had locked up the doors and pulled the blinds. So Tom Jerrial did a “stand up” outside the front doors.
I would later learn that Fred Smith
wrote letters “CRYING and WHINING” to
ABC executives about the way Federal Express was treated by 20-20.
On
the following pages are the letters Fred Smith wrote.
x
x
x
x
x
x
YES I HAVE THEM...THEY
WILL BE IN HARD COVER BOOK
X
X
X
X
X Put Fred Smiths letters
here...............
When I first read the letters that
Fred Smith had written to ABC I laughed my head off. Even today I laugh when I
think about them.
From reading the letters I get the feeling that Fred Smith is a
compulsive LIAR. And also that he behaves like a little spoiled brat. He
reminds me of the little boy who is the “only” one on the street with a ball.
And when the other little boys insist that he play by the rules like everybody
else...He takes his ball and goes home.
He complains to John Sias,
President of ABC and Victor Neufeld , Executive Producer of 20-20 that the CSS segment on 20- 20 was shallow,
scurrilous, and deceptive. I’ve
often thought the same about FEDERAL: EXPRESS
Maybe Fred Smith should look into
a mirror and say the word...”LIAR” everyday ...so that he will recognize one .
1) The Constant Surveillance Service was phony, it didn’t
exist. And yet
Federal Express made millions of dollars ripping off everyone they could with
it. And I challenge him to sit down in
front of a Major TV network ( 20- 20 would be great ) or a nationally known
newspaper, maybe the Los Angeles Times, New York Times etc. with me and we can go over the many
thousands of DD1907 tally sheets I have ( and Federal Express has but tried to
hide from government investigators ) and I will prove that the CSS service was
false.
b)
Even Tom Oliver ( Vice President of Federal Express ) stated on 20-20 in front of 30
million people that Federal Express didn’t have a CSS service.
( or
did you forget that Fred )
Why then, Mr. Fred Smith, did your
people sign those contracts with the Military and government and bill the United States millions of
Dollars.?
c)
Also I have a memo in which states that
your “friend” General Stanford
says that you can’t make the CSS service work. But I do question “why he”
continued to let you bill the government for it. He must be a VERY GOOD
friend.
d) And what about the inter
office memo that John West sent out.
Which said “we cannot continue to lead our customers on, thus jeopardizing our
integrity.
How much integrity can Federal Express have when it betrays it’s
Country?
2)
Fred, you talk about statistics, you say that Federal express had a
99.1% successful service level on the CSS shipments?
I would bet that Federal Express had at least a 99.1% service
contract failure rate
on the CSS shipments. ( and probably 100% ) Do you want to challenge me
on that ? I have looked at thousands of
DD1907 tally sheets and have NEVER seen one that didn’t show
violations of military and governments contracts yet.
Bring out all of the DD1907’s Fred ( or are you just hiding your little lies )
3) You keep telling the people at 20-20 that the Dover station was
closed and had never opened for business.
Can’t you get it in your head that Chris Harper was inside the station just a few minutes
earlier and saw Federal Express employees in there.( HE WAS INSIDE THE
STATION ) it was open. Are you lying again
FRED?
b) Maybe you forgot
that I worked in that station for more than a year. The CSA ( customer
service agent was a black woman by the name of Michele ) The managers name was
Tim Keyser. I have pictures taken from the inside of it when I worked there. I
even had two performance reviews done from that station.
The
station was OPEN for more than a
year before the 20-20 story.
Was
the manager of the Dover station hiding from the truth?
You state in your letter to John Sias in the (3rd )
paragraph that 20 20 never attempted to interview even one current Federal Express employee. Well Fred , Chris
Harper “did” go into “that” Federal Express station and did see employees
there, But when he returned ( 2 ) minutes later to interview them, “they had
closed the blinds and locked the doors” and hid inside like scared little
bunnies. You’re lying again Fred.
Was Fred Smith and Federal Express telling more lies again?
I ask...is there no end to your lies
Fred?
Also in the letter to Mr.
Nuffield, Fred states that Federal
Express provided the CSS service to the military for years at a loss. But I
ask...how can you lose money when someone gives you millions of dollars
annually for nothing? Your letter seems to imply that you were
providing CSS to the military for their benefit.. I am providing a October 31, 1988 inner office memo. (
I have more ) which seems to imply that your sales people were very excited
about the CSS sales potential. It said
that the CSS had an “exceptional potential” . And that
their best estimate was $50,000,000.00 annually.
X
X
X
XX
X
X put
CSS potential here p139
X
XX
Fred Smith was so upset that 20-20 exposed the FRAUD by Federal Express that he canceled $100,000,000.00 dollars of advertisement
with ABC. Much of that money was for
advertisement on 20-20. Isn’t it funny
how he liked 20-20 until they told the truth on him. ( Taking your ball and
running home ...spoiled little rich brat ? )
Chris Harper and Tom Jerrial laughed
at Fred. While everybody was standing around they were talking and making fun
of Fred and how he couldn’t stand the
truth. Chris said something like Fred probably doesn’t realize it but there are
sponsors waiting in line to advertise on 20-20. And that by canceling his ads
on 20 -20 it will allow ABC to charge more money to the next sponsors so in
reality his act of a spoiled brat will only make more money for ABC. And that
people at ABC were laughing at Fred
Smith.
And then everybody standing around
only laughed harder. Somebody said,” does that mean we’ll all get bonuses for
making ABC more money’? And then they really laughed at that.
It was obvious that Fred Smith and
Federal Express didn’t scare ABC at
all. They had dealt with tyrants before and 20-20 feared no one. They came in
did the story and told the truth. If someone didn’t like it ...too bad. I asked
Chris Harper if he thought Federal Express
might try to sue them. His response was that Federal Express wasn’t that stupid. They would make a lot of
noise but that Federal Express knows
they were caught doing wrong. No ...they wouldn’t dare sue ...they were
guilty.
I did learn later on that Federal
Express tried to get Chris Harper to come down to Memphis.... “alone” before the 20 20 show aired . They
said they wanted to talk to him and show him around Federal’s hub. The catch
was ...he had to leave Tom Jerrial, the camera crew, the sound crew and EVERYBODY ELSE home. He had to come alone.
Funny thing...that’s exactly what
they did to General Stanford. Federal Express
had General Stanford come down to Memphis so they could talk to him and
show him around and give him a big time. And who knows what else happened down
there. But according to Federal Express documents General Stanford was an ally
to Federal Express and helped them make..... ahem... “the right
decisions.” Maybe they were hoping to
“somehow” make Chris Harper an ally too.
Fortunately Chris Harper was a professional and a man of character
and “real” integrity.. He knew better
than to waste his valuable time going down to Memphis. He was trying to do an
honest story and he wasn’t going to play any “funny games” with Fred and his
gang at Fedex. Maybe that’s why Fred got so pissed and wrote to everybody at
ABC complaining about Chris and the way he treated Federal Express..
Perhaps Fred was expecting Chris
Harper and 20-20 to kow tow to
him.
What I didn’t know until the show
aired was that the MTMC had suspended Federal Express as a carrier.
On the next page is the letter sent by
Colonel Roger F. Maguire who was
Director of Inland Traffic for the U.S. Army.
It was sent “certified mail” U.S.
Mail to Fred Smith.
X
XX
Place
suspension letter here
X
X
X
XX
July
7, 1989........... 20-20 airs
segment on Federal Express Rip-off
I had waited a long time for
this. To tell the truth about Federal Express to 30 million Americans.
I never wanted to be a TV personality,
I just wanted the phony CSS service stopped. And for Federal Express to
tell the truth. Even today I still want the same thing. For Fred
Smith to tell America that Federal Express knew all along they were committing
fraud against America and betraying our country. To admit to their crimes and pay
the full penalties. But I knew then that they would never admit the whole
truth. And I still know today that they will never admit it.
Some may think I desire for Fedex to
come clean is unusual but lets be honest, how many Americans would love to hear
O.J. confess to killing Nicole?
I know Marsha Clark would. Because she knows
just how guilty O.J. is.
After the show aired I got a lot of
calls again. I had expected them.
One caller who said she was from
Chicago raised hell with me and said Fred would get me, and that I would never
be safe again. A number of callers again said my car would go BOOM. And others
just said that I would be DEAD SOON and
to get my affairs in order. Some even said that they wished my whole family
died. ( nice guys) Some said that THEY were on their way
to kill me personally. ( I did keep my guns loaded for awhile, and when I went
out at night I took a gun ). Several times when I went out at night I was
certain I was being followed. It may have been Federal Express investigators
just tailing me...or it may have been someone else from Federal Express with a
lot more on their minds. When I felt someone was following me I would go into a
busy section of a shopping center. And remain there until the car following me
left. Yeah I had a gun, but I didn’t know what they had, or what they wanted.
Funny thing ( if you can call it that ) is that of ALL the threatening and
harassing phone calls I got... not one caller ever denied that I was telling the truth and not one defended
the CSS service they were just pissed off that I had gone to the government and
to the media.
In the morning I still went through
the rituals of standing beside both of my vehicles and opening the doors, then
stood outside and started both of them, always
holding my breath and hoping they wouldn’t blow up.
Sometimes the price of telling the truth and standing by your
convictions is high. And the strain on my wife and I was heavy at times. She is
a very religious woman. And I think her faith in GOD and church got both her
and I through it. Though not without quite a bit of strain. There is a saying
that... “that which doesn’t kill you
will make you stronger,”... well I have
learned there is a lot of truth to that saying and I understand it better now than I ever did.
Of course NOT ALL of the calls were
threatening. Some were from couriers who knew about the violations and agreed
with the story. Some were glad that SOMEONE finally told the truth about
the phony CSS service and congratulated me for being brave enough to stand up
to Federal Express and Fred Smith. But even they cautioned me to watch my back
because a lot of people at Federal Express were angry because I exposed the
fraud. And there were some who even told
me stories about drugs and thefts at Federal Express, which they said “seemed
all too common” in their work place.
After awhile things seemed to settle
down and I continued working in Maryland. The plant manager knew the story and
seemed to share my beliefs that it was wrong to cheat the government and
especially the military. He said that I should be proud of what I had done and
that he respected me for what I did. He knew that what I did wasn’t easy.
I wanted to be sure that Federal Express wasn’t still violating contracts and wasn’t still handling CSS
shipments. I filed a “Freedom of Information”
request with the military about Federal Express and any investigations
or prosecutions which might have taken place.
I also wrote letters to every
senator and every congressman in the United States. The U.S. Attorney,
the Vice president, even the President. And I told them exactly what
Federal Express was doing and asked them to investigate the violations of the military contracts.
Tennessee has ten congressmen and
two senators and NOT ONE ever wrote back to me. ( I think of them as... Bastards with no
country )
I did get back some helpful letters
from some others. And of course the senators in my home state did what they
could to help me with information and requests to the military and the
Department of Defense. It was from there and a few other places and sources
that I did find some very interesting information.
While assisting the Air Force with
it’s investigation of CSS fraud by Federal Express I had asked
Special Agent Paul Ackerman to keep me informed of the status of the
investigation. He told me when the investigation was completed. And afterwards
when he went to Washington to talk to the U.S. Attorney General about
prosecuting Fedex for fraud. He said
that the U.S. Attorney was pleased with the investigation was going to push for
prosecution. He also said that he would be contacting other branches of the
military and government as he believed the fraud extended into their areas
too.
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations Special Agent Paul
Ackerman did complete the investigation of CSS fraud by Federal Express. And
after doing a nationwide surveillance of CSS shipments ...found that EVERY
CSS shipment that they followed had
numerous violations of government and
military CSS contracts that Federal
Express had signed for. The Air Force
wanted prosecution on the violations.
On the following ( 2 ) pages is a
draft declaration by Paul Ackerman , Special Agent... Air Force Office of Special Investigations. ( AFOSI )
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
XX
X
X
PLACE ACKERMANS REPORT HERE.
X
X
X
X
X
YES I DO HAVE
THEM...COMING IN HARD COVER
OSI also served an Inspector Generals subpoena on Federal Express
requesting records relating to CSS shipments, including vouchers, government bills of lading, and CSS 1907
signature sheets. Federal produced some documents in response to the
subpoena, but informed the government that the company (did not ) segregate it’s records.
And that, therefore records of CSS shipments
were intermixed with the rest
of Federal Express’s records and it
would be nearly impossible to find the CSS 1907 tally sheets ( sounds like their lost CSS shipments
). Federal Express also claimed that it
would be almost impossible to locate and identify the documents relating to CSS
shipments, which they claimed was only a tiny portion of Fedex’s business from
amongst the many millions of non CSS shipments. AFOSI was at first, forced to investigate Fedex without the benefit of having the 1907 signature sheets.
Then AFOSI was informed by legal representatives of mine that Federal
Express did in fact segregate it’s
records so that CSS access was relatively simple. When the United
States government confronted Federal Express with this information, Fedex admitted that (YES ) it did keep
CSS records separate. Fedex was forced to produce the records they
had withheld from the United States Government and at last notice the
government was reviewing these records.
It wasn’t until some time had passed that I was able to obtain
more documents that gave me a better picture of the fraudulent CSS service that Federal Express was selling to it’s customers , military,
government, and even the private sector. It was these documents which conformed
what I had known for a long time.
There was no doubt that the CSS
service was a rip-off. And I had always
known that it would be easy to provide true CSS service to it’s customers if
Federal Express had really wanted to. All they had to do to give true CSS
service would be:
1 )
Each courier had to bring ALL CSS shipments directly back to the station
after picking them up, and there had to
be a “real” CSS custodian in the station to sign for it.
2 ) Fedex had to have “real “ security cages at “ALL” stations ( the Dover station had no security cages
and no security system ) and how many other stations?
3) CSS shipments should not be mixed
in with the common freight.
4 ) when there was a CSS shipment to
be delivered, it should be the first delivery. That would give “true”
visual surveillance.
5 ) Everybody that handled a CSS shipment
had to sign for it.
This
procedure is not complicated at all and as you can see is relatively simple.
However it would mean that Federal Express would have to earn their
profits.
From examining all of the documents
I have, I strongly believe that top management at Fedex thought
no one would catch them. Or considering what connections they might have
had within the military, they probably NEVER considered that an employee ( an
Honest Courier ) would turn them in.
And that they could continue getting away with it. That they would
continue making tens of millions of dollars from a service that didn’t even
exist, except on paper. I believe they thought the name “Federal Express...now
called Fedex” would fool people into
thinking they were a great company with high integrity. Whereas in reality it seems they were a
company lacking not only in integrity
and morals but also in loyalty to their customers and their country. And that they just used the much
“advertised” reputation of Federal Express as a cover so that they could
defraud their customers.
Throughout the whole CSS
issue Fred Smith and others have
repeatedly said or implied that I have lied about the CSS service being a fraud. And that the only reason I am saying all
this is because I am a disgruntled
former employee.
Well I admit I did get harassed and
was treated very badly while employed there. But I don’t believe I was the only
one who was. I have talked to many Fedex employees and many have
complained about being mistreated by management. As a matter of fact right now
thousands of couriers and other
employees all across America are either
trying to get, or hoping to get a union within Fedex so that they might get
fair treatment, better benefits and
better pay. And I have been told by many couriers all across America that management at Fedex is determined not to let
a union be formed to properly protect it’s workers. I have been told that Fedex
is fighting it with every dirty trick in the book. Even Senator Ted
Kennedy ( D- Mass. ) went on national television in an effort to help current
Fedex employees who felt helpless against Fedex’s oppressive and unfair policies. His
office had received numerous complaints about Fedex and pleas for help from current
Fedex employees. And his segment on TV had numerous accounts of FEDEX employees who recounted and
demonstrated the horrors at FEDEX.
He even felt compelled to
publicly warn Fedex on national television about retaliating against those
employees who had the courage to speak the truth about Fedex.
Still the facts speak for
themselves. If I or the Philadelphia Inquirer , or even 20-20
had “lied” or even misled the public about the CSS service, Fedex would have sued ALL of us immediately.
Yet they didn’t.
They took their stolen money
and ran like THIEVES in the night.
Also I believe Fedex knows as I
found out very early on, that it is easy to prove violations of military and
government regulations regarding the CSS service. The key is now as it has
always been...in the DD1907 tally sheets. I have no doubt, that is
why Fedex has tried to hide them and why they mislead the Air Force
investigators about not being able to find them.
Special Agent Paul Ackerman realized
the importance of the DD1907’s as did Mack Reed of the Philadelphia Inquirer
and Chris Harper of 20-20. That’s also why I always held onto every DD1907 I
could get my hands on. Which is a lot.
While many will ask how Fedex was
able to get away with this fraudulent act for such a long period of time. How
come no one in the military or other government branches realized that
Fedex wasn’t giving the CSS service to
it’s classified sensitive military shipments that it had contracted for? Well the answer may not be that complicated
or hard to find as some might believe.
There was a General John Stanford,
Commander of the (MTMC ) Military Traffic Management Command, that Fedex documents say was an “ally of Federal Express”. One
describes him as an “unswerving ally and supporter of Federal Express”. And that, he was involved in helping
Federal Express make “the right
decisions”, regarding CSS
and other military freight. ( I have to wonder if that meant ...how to cheat
the military too, and get away with it ).
Also on the memo , John Turner of
military sales for Fedex requests
that General Stanford be given the Executive Treatment, in a visit to
headquarters in Memphis. Where he
received some kind of gift from Fred Smith personally. Which, as I have
been told, is a violation of the
United States military law. Because
General Stanford was an officer in the United States Army ( though I question
just what he did there, because he certainly either didn’t know or didn’t care
about Fedex’s fraud against the military ) and
was engaged in negotiating commercial contracts with Fedex. He was also responsible for making sure
those contracts weren’t violated. Would this be a possible explanation as
to why Fedex was able to get away with
submitting “false claims” to the United
States of America for so many years?
How does one who is an “unswerving ally” to Federal Express and also
according to Fedex documents was involved in “their” decision making regarding military
contracts, also protect the United States in an unbiased and professional way? Was
he an ally to the United States too? or just Federal Express ?
Did
he also give the “same kind of help” to
other government contractors?
On the ( 3 ) next pages I have
included documents regarding General Stanford’s relationship with Federal
Express.
I’ll let the reader be the judge of these documents . But I must say, I
hope and pray this isn’t typical of the relationship and behavior between our
military commanders who are supposed to be protecting us and government
contractors.
While it is my opinion that these documents show a highly improper and
possibly illegal relationship between General Stanford and Fedex I will let you be the judge.
But I have to say. I do wonder just
how many United States military officers are behaving in this manner with
government contractors? How many Military Officers are allegedly serving the
United States of America, while
being wined and dined by big money contractors that are defrauding and
betraying America ?
And I wonder just how many of these
military officers are still paying special homage to and socializing with
corrupt government contractors , even after it has been revealed to them and
the rest of America, that these contractors are defrauding the United States
military out of millions of dollars.
Or
don’t these military officers CARE ?
One thing I have found out by
looking at recently discovered documents
is that Federal Express had
previously been warned many times about the severe and serious violations of it’s military contracts concerning CSS
service. And somehow , but I can’t figure out
why, they were allowed to continue signing military contracts when it
was so obvious that they were violating them.
And with just a little bit of “honest” investigation, it could have easily been
found out that Federal Express
was not providing the CSS service it had been billing the Military and other
government branches for.
And I wonder “what”
if any, part did General Stanford or any other officers in the military play in allowing Fedex to
continue violating Military and government contracts?
Is it that they ( the military )
didn’t know...?
Is this incompetence ?...
Is it “knowing” but not caring...?
Could it possibly be that General Stanford and others in the
military.....( well I’ll let my readers
fill in the blanks here )
On the following pages are some of
the many complaints the military and others had about Federal Express’s “phony
CSS service.
YES
I HAVE THEM...COMING IN HARD COPY
XX
X
X
On
the following pages I have put in some of the complaints I have been able to
uncover about Federal Express’s CSS
failures on the following pages.
X
X
On the following pages is a copy of the Subpoena issued to
Federal Express by special agent Chris Davis of the Air Force Office of Special
Investigations.
As you can see the Air force was trying to get the DD1907’s
along with other documents and billing receipts.
For every set of 1) form 1113 , Public Voucher
2)
Standard form 11103, Government Bill of Laden
3) DD Form 1907 Signature and Tally Form
I
believe to this day that every set of those three (3) components for a CSS
shipment would have shown numerous contract violations and fraud by Fedex for every CSS shipment they
handled. Except for perhaps a handful of “special demonstration shipments”
that Federal Express used to dupe military officials while trying to get
valuable CSS contracts from the military. These “special demonstration
shipments” actually only further imply intentional and knowing fraud
because they show that Federal Express “did” and “could” provide a real CSS
service if they wanted to.
Even when they were caught
red-handed violating the
contracts, because of their “so called “ reputation and Fred Smith’s pleadings
to the freight board, they were given a second chance to “do it right”
while under “probation”. Federal
Express refused. They knew that the
military investigators would be watching them closely this time...and they had NO
REAL CSS service system in place. And
to be honest I doubt they ever wanted to provide a real CSS service when a phony one was much more
profitable. Also by providing a real
CSS service they would show a dramatic different in the way CSS had been
performed before. And that might only make them look worse.
They knew that they had NO real
programs or systems in place that could stand up to “honest” scrutiny. And
their lies and “phony service” would be exposed.
Federal Express decided it would be better to take their
stolen profits and run while they could. Raise hell with the media, try to
discredit me, cry foul in every way that they could think of. It was high
dollar damage control at it’s best.
And I believe that Fedex
was trying to keep the DD1907’s
out of government investigators hands when they told them it would be
nearly impossible to segregate them.
* NOTE...The Air Force wanted
the form 1113 Public Vouchers to prove
that Federal Express did in fact bill the government for the failed
shipments.
( false
claims = fraud ) and possibly jail time.
If it were
possible to get Fedex to put ALL
of the DD1907’s in one room so that
government investigators could look at JUST THEM ...my my what a story they would tell. Of course we all know by now that would never
happen. Because then, Fred Smith
might have to apologize to me ( which
he would never do ). Because anyone looking at ALL of the DD 1907’s together would KNOW that Federal
Express’s CSS service was a sham and never really existed except on paper. That same paper that Federal Express waived in front of the United States Military
when they signed contracts which brought millions of falsely taken
( I call it stolen ) dollars into Fedex’s coffer’s.
Shortly after the 20-20 show aired
the FBI Office in Wilmington, Delaware asked me to help them. Special Agent
Adkins of the FBI asked me to explain exactly what was going on with the
Federal Express CSS thing and how did I come to work with the Air Force Office
of Special Investigations. After I had finished going over the details with him
and he had asked me some questions about it, he said that he had a more
pressing problem. Then he asked if I would try to help him with it. To which I replied of course, I
would help him all I could.
He explained that part of his
responsibilities as an FBI investigator was to protect money and other
valuables held in banks. Then he went on to say that the Bank of Delaware had
shipped a $100,000 gold shipment through Federal Express about a week before
and it had come up missing. The package
it was shipped in had showed up in Atlanta but it was empty and the gold was no
where to be found.
I explained to him that stealing
from a shipment and than sending the empty package or envelope on to the
destination station was a common trick that Federal Express couriers used when
they stole valuables from shipments. Then he said something that surprised me.
He said that the FBI was well aware of the thefts and drugs shipments that went
on within Federal Express. But that company officials would not totally
cooperate with the FBI so they couldn’t
stop a lot of what went on. Then he said that even I didn’t have a clue as to just how much illegal drugs
were being shipped through Federal.
That I couldn’t begin to imagine. I took that as being an awful lot more
than I had imagined.
Then he turned the conversation back
to the missing gold shipment. He said that the
investigator that the bank had sent to the Philadelphia airport where
they load and unload Fedex planes felt that he was being stonewalled. That when
the bank first called Federal Express and told them about the missing shipment,
Federal Express had promised all kinds
of cooperation. But that when the Bank investigator had gone to the Airport
and began asking questions they were
being very vague and evasive even close mouthed about answering questions. And that the bank and the investigator were
pissed at Federal Express because they did not seem to be trying to help. “And
it was”, Mr. Adkins said, “a $100,000 gold
shipment which is a lot of gold to be stolen”. And now it had been about a week
and no sign of the gold and little help from Federal Express.
I asked him how big the box was that
the gold was shipped in. And he replied that it was about the size of a shoe
box. I had never really thought about how big
$100,000 worth of gold would be. And to be honest I was surprised. And I
tried to visualize it. It was then that I realized that it was gone forever.
Federal Express couriers have been known to steal shipments as big as computers
and TV’s , a gold shipment, with it’s value and size...well that’s a shipment from heaven for a courier with
sticky fingers. And there have been many of them. Well that was my thoughts then, and as far as I know even today,
they have never caught the courier that took it and have never recovered the
gold.
Mr. Adkins asked me how they handled
shipments from the time they picked them up from the shipper. How many people
might have handled it and who would have had the best opportunity to steal it.
I asked him if they had the name of
the courier who had made the pick up and he said he would get it for me but
that they had already checked him out.
Could someone at the Airport have taken it he asked ? What ...was
he kidding?
Absolutely I replied. But so could
anyone from the station. I explained to him about all the stealing and drugs
there and at the airport and told him that it might even be worse in Atlanta
where the shipment went to. That sometime before, one of my managers had told
me that Atlanta had had a severe problem with both drugs and thefts
and that the only way they could try to stop it was to give a stationwide
unannounced drug test. The only problem was... Federal Express management never
figured that so many people would fail the test and as a result they lost over
half the station according to my manager.
He laughed at that.
I did spend some time with him
explaining how the freight traveled
through Federal Express , and gave him a good picture of what to look for at
the Wilmington station and at the airport. I
even worked with the bank trying to explain how vulnerable their
shipments were and suggested ways to conceal them. But I made it perfectly
clear to them that they were at the mercy of the couriers and cargo handlers
when it came to valuables. As far as I
know they never caught the thief or recovered the gold shipment.
In closing I would like to say
that as a result of all of the efforts of the Air Force Special Investigations
Units, especially Agent Paul Ackermen, Fedex no longer advertises or has a CSS service.
I believe it had always been a false
service which was solely intended only to get large military and government
contracts which they never would have gotten otherwise.
And as a Federal Express company
memo states there was a potential fifty million ( $50,000,000 ) dollars worth of CSS contracts per year. I think
it would have been a terrible thing to let those thousands perhaps millions of
sensitive classified shipments get into the hands of a company like Fedex.
These shipments needed constant surveillance and special attention and Fedex
gave neither. They just ripped off America.
Oh Yes...Julio Columbo ( Liberty
District Director for Fedex )
Shortly after the Philadelphia Inquirer
broke the story on the CSS fraud by Federal Express, I gave Julio a call. It may or may not have been the thing to do,
but I just had to know if that call came up from Fred ( you remember, the one I
told him about in his office when he upheld my written warning for being late
once in four years ). I knew he would be getting a call from Memphis. I
just had to see how he handled it.
When I called and asked to speak with Julio, there was a few
minutes before he came to the phone. I believed they would tape record my call
to him, and I believe that’s what took so long for him to answer.
When he finally answered, his
voice was shaky, he sounded very nervous, and he seemed like a puppy that had
been bitten by a big wolf.
“What
do you want Gary,” he asked. GOD he sounded pathetic...none of that “FEDERAL
EXPRESS CONFIDENCE” in his voice. Just
that of a scared “little man.”
“Well
Julio, did you get that call,” I asked.
“
What do you want” was all he could say.
It
appeared obvious to me that he HAD in fact gotten that call from Memphis.
The
only thing I wondered was...did they ream his ASS big enough to drive an
“Eighteen Wheeler” through without
touching the sides.
Because
he certainly sounded like they had. He
sounded like a scared little man.
And
I thought ...how many times had Julio played a big tough guy with some little
hard working courier, who was doing his or her job as best they could. Only to
be treated like shit at District Headquarters by this clown in his $400 dollar
suit.
Yeah Julio...you’ve probably enjoyed sticking it
up enough couriers asses, how did it
feel going up yours ? “Was Fred gentle with you”....ha ha.
The End
Well there you have it. A side of
Fedex many have never seen. Of course Fred Smith will say I am just a
disgruntled employee twisting the truth around. And who knows maybe ( probably
) FEDEX will send their attorney’s after me.
But
if Fedex did have a real CSS service
why did they try to hide certain documents from government attorney’s? Wouldn’t these documents have proven FEDEX
did give the service they charged for?
I have hundreds of recorded
conversations of Fedex employees, government agents, even customers dealing
with drugs , thefts, and fraud. And perhaps a half million documents on Federal
Express/Fedex.
And yes you see...I can call Fred
Smith a liar and a forger because he is. He forged the signature of attorney
Robert L. Cox on February 5, 1973 in a fictitious resolution to Union bank in
Little Rock Arkansas. And he was
indicted in Federal Court in Little
Rock, Arkansas on forgery charges .
Also don’t forget his lies mentioned in this book. FRED SMITH IS A LIAR...
And on... January 31, 1975 he hit
and killed a pedestrian. He drove away without stopping to help. When caught,
he claimed he didn’t realize ( yeah right ) that he had hit anyone. He was
charged with leaving the scene and driving without a license. ( maybe that
was his version of the “Smith System of
Defensive Driving” )
I would like to be able to say that
Fedex has paid back ALL the
money they falsely took. But I cannot. Although I have been able to stop
Fedex from cheating it’s customers by
using a CSS service which was a sham, it doesn’t end there. To the best of my understanding they still
have not given back all the millions of dollars they have falsely taken from
their customers. This includes the many military branches, the NSA, possibly
the CIA and who knows what other branches of government .
Also I believe that the business and
civilian sectors have been defrauded out of millions too. It was after all, a
commercial customer that I was first told to commit fraud against. And as my
manager was with me, to do otherwise would have cost me my job.
If you found this book interesting
and hopefully enlightening you will really enjoy my next book. It will be
chocked full of stories about thefts of drugs and valuables, drug shipments and
drug abuse by Fedex couriers and other
employees. A real how, where
and when they stole drugs and other valuables from Fedex shipments.
If you are a Fedex
courier/worker or a UPS driver you will
find out just how unhappy many Fedex workers are. And some of the things Fedex
employees say management is doing to stop them from unionizing. Of course you
may already have a good idea.
Look for it to be out sometime in
the fall of 99.
I doubt they ever expected a real...
“Honest Courier”
Gary Rullo
Warning
to Fedex....
I was
going to use this page to caution
Fedex about trying to stop my
Book. And of the consequences they
would bring upon themselves if they tried. That it was their arrogance and
stupidity that put them on TV the last time, and to consider what it got them. That I know I can and I will put them in the newspapers and on national
TV again at the first sign of their lawyers ...in a far worse debacle
than CSS ever was, and I believe it will be even more costly this time. ( and
just as before, they can’t stop me )
That my book is an honest story
about the things I have seen and
experienced at Fedex. And that they should not violate my rights to publish and
profit from it. And they had better not try to discredit my book... or me
again. I have prepared long and well and if
I have to I will be much nastier than they can ever imagine...I have
come to realize they are despicable people and do not play fairly or
honestly...and that I realize it this time... and have prepared. That surely
they don’t think I have written this book without a planned strategy, should they try to stop it. ( I don’t just “rattle sabers” ) ask Julio .
But you know what !!!
Of the many things I’ve learned about Fred Smith and Fedex over
the years, one thing is certain. They will do whatever they decide...regardless
of how stupid it is.
So...
no threats, no warnings, no cautions...none !!!
Go ahead FEDEX...bring on your
lawyers. They didn’t scare me then, and they REALLY don’t scare me now. The
truth will always be the truth...and all your lies will never change
that.
The
Japanese didn’t believe the United
States had a “second” atomic bomb either... until after it was dropped on them. So go ahead... “let your power and arrogance
be the anchors which pull you
down”. I will not be alone this time.
Pandoras Box is waiting to be opened...
FEDEX
Fraud
Drugs
Thefts
and Lies
by an... “Honest
Courier”