The settlement comes more than three years after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against former Celadon executives Eric Meek and Bobby Peavler.
On Thursday, Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson granted prosecutors’ request to dismiss the charges against Celadon’s former president and chief operating officer, Eric Meek, and its former chief financial officer, Bobby Peavler.
A four-week fraud trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 22 for Celadon’s former president and chief operating officer, Eric Meek, 41, and its former chief financial officer, Bobby Peavler, 42.
With most liquidation efforts complete, Celadon has raised only $75 million—$45 million short of the $120 million it needed to satisfy a loan from its secured creditors.
The December announcement brought to a bitter close one of central Indiana’s great entrepreneurial success stories. Stephen Russell, the son of a New York City taxi driver, launched the business with a single truck in 1985 and grow it into the largest provider of international truckload services in North America, with more than 150,000 annual border crossings between the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The company moved goods for many well-known companies, including Alcoa, General Electric, John Deere, Philip Morris, Procter & Gamble, Target and Walmart.
CEO Paul Svindland said challenges in the trucking industry, along with fallout from what prosecutors allege was a massive accounting fraud engineered by prior management, proved impossible to overcome.
The Indianapolis-based company lost its way after founder Stephen Russell gave up the CEO’s role in 2012, and three of its former executives now are facing fraud charges.
In addition to numerous criminal charges, the former chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Indianapolis-based Celadon Group are facing a civil suit filed Thursday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Justice Department’s April 25 press release—which announced Celadon had admitted to the fraud and agreed to pay $42 million in restitution—closes by noting that the investigation is ongoing.
The Indianapolis-based trucking company admitted to “filing materially false and misleading statements to investors and falsifying books, records and accounts,” federal prosecutors said. One former executive also was charged with fraud.
The trucking firm launched its in-house truck-driving school a year ago to boost the supply of drivers and, executives hope, cut down on turnover, which is 98 percent per year at the company, mirroring the industry average.
After placing in the Top 10 at four previous editions of the World Food Championships competition for chefs, Cindy Hawkins didn’t have to settle for “nearly victorious” status in 2025.
The project imagined by Tom Huston and George Sweet turned 760 acres of farmland on Carmel’s west side into a quaint community that mimics small-town life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
