Long story short, the indicted executives had fly-by-night LLCs that they used to accept payments from Polar Freight clients for preferential service. (Or for access to Polar Freight's shipping services in the first place.) They called this "consulting." Like:
> "Here's your invoice from Polar Freight at $2/kg for that recent air freight shipment. Oh, and you also owe Nightrunner LLC $0.5/kg for Consulting services.
Here's a separate invoice for that."
Pretty simple scam, described in those terms.
The kicker is that some poor bastard was indicted for paying the "consulting" fee!
I got curious, so I dug up some more details: https://archive.ph/gvYFE
And the indictment is here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1579271...
Long story short, the indicted executives had fly-by-night LLCs that they used to accept payments from Polar Freight clients for preferential service. (Or for access to Polar Freight's shipping services in the first place.) They called this "consulting." Like:
> "Here's your invoice from Polar Freight at $2/kg for that recent air freight shipment. Oh, and you also owe Nightrunner LLC $0.5/kg for Consulting services. Here's a separate invoice for that."
Pretty simple scam, described in those terms.
The kicker is that some poor bastard was indicted for paying the "consulting" fee!