Houston Dispatcher Kelly Pleads Guilty to $1.2M Wire Fraud

Richard V. Kelly, 44, of Houston, Texas, is headed to federal prison for 15 months after pleading guilty to a brazen wire fraud scheme that bled an Oklahoma City business of more than $1.2 million. The trucking dispatcher admitted to fabricating deliveries, forging documents, and pocketing illicit payments for services never rendered—stretching the fraud over nearly five years.

Kelly, once a trusted dispatcher for Freeway Delivery, Inc., exploited his position to defraud Midwest Hose & Specialty, an Oklahoma City-based company, from December 2007 through August 2012. Using his access to billing systems, he created false waybills and invoices for deliveries supposedly made by his wife—a truck driver also employed by the same Houston company. The invoices claimed shipments were delivered to Houma, Louisiana, but investigators confirmed no such hauls ever occurred.

The scam hinged on deception and insider access. Kelly admitted he knew Midwest Hose would pay the fraudulent invoices. He further acknowledged that his wife, listed as the driver, would receive 65 to 70 percent of the total fee charged to the victim company. The rest lined his own pockets through shell transactions and falsified records routed via electronic communications—crossing state lines and triggering federal wire fraud charges.

On December 8, 2015, Kelly was indicted. Today, he stood before U.S. District Judge Robin J. Cauthron in Oklahoma City and entered a guilty plea. Judge Cauthron sentenced him to 15 months in federal prison and ordered full restitution of $1,212,320.13 to be paid directly to Midwest Hose & Specialty. The court also entered a forfeiture judgment of $809,115.50, directing Kelly to surrender assets tied to the illicit proceeds.

Kelly must report to a federal correctional facility on February 13, 2017. The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and brought to prosecution by Assistant U.S. Attorney K. McKenzie Anderson, who emphasized the deliberate, long-running nature of the fraud. ‘This wasn’t a mistake,’ Anderson said in court. ‘This was theft masked as logistics.’

The takedown underscores growing federal scrutiny of white-collar crimes hidden within transportation and logistics networks. For Midwest Hose & Specialty, the damage was financial and operational—recovering from false billing of this scale takes years. But the sentence sends a clear message: fraud may move quietly through wires and waybills, but it won’t move unseen.