A 51-year-old Bowie and D.C. resident who once told a federal judge he was not the man named in his own indictment has pleaded guilty to wire fraud for doctoring bank records to pocket $1.35 million in COVID-19 relief funds meant for his struggling hauling and snow removal company. Robert Terrell, owner of District Logistics LLC, admitted to submitting falsified paperwork to the U.S. Small Business Administration, capping a case that also saw him detained after an unauthorized trip to the Caribbean while out on pretrial release.
According to the Daily Voice, Terrell repeatedly told the court he was actually “Robert Alphonso III, the General Executor of the Terrell Estate,” not the Robert A. Terrell named in the charges — a claim prosecutors called bogus and one he repeated across multiple court filings before eventually acknowledging, according to prosecutors, that his name was in fact Robert Alphonso Terrell. Legal experts note the maneuver reflects pseudo-legal tactics commonly used by sovereign citizen litigants who try to draw a fictitious distinction between themselves and a legal “estate” to deny a court’s jurisdiction, according to the same outlet’s reporting.
District Logistics LLC, a D.C. company solely owned by Terrell, was established in 2016 to haul sand, dirt, gravel, and asphalt and to provide snow and ice removal, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The company secured its first Economic Injury Disaster Loan of $125,800 from the SBA in July 2020, the start of a lending relationship prosecutors say Terrell would later manipulate for far larger sums.
Doctored Bank Records Fueled a $1.35 Million Payout
Court records show that in November 2021, Terrell sought a second loan modification worth $2 million, reporting that District Logistics owed approximately $518,000 to a creditor. A month later, court documents show the company reported owing just over $71,000 to that same creditor — a discrepancy that set the stage for the fraud at the center of the case…