Just before 4 p.m. on Tuesday, February 3, Indiana State Police responded to a crash on State Highway 67 near County Road 550 East, about 3 miles from the Ohio state line in a flat, open farmland where trouble could be seen a mile away.
Gert Pretorius, 44, of Geneva, Indiana, was driving a 2019 International semi eastbound when he slowed for traffic ahead of him. Behind him, another semi, a 2022 Freightliner driven by Bekzhan Beishekeev, 30, of Philadelphia, did not stop.
Instead of braking, Beshekeyev turned left, crossed the center line and hit a westbound Chevrolet truck head-on.
The van was driven by Donald Stipp, 55, of Portland, Indiana. Among his passengers were four men from Bryant’s tight-knit Amish community: 50-year-old Henry Eicher. His sons are Menno Eicher, 25, and Paul Eicher, 19. and Simon Girod, 23, a family friend.
Three of them, Henry, Menno and Paul Eichel, were pronounced dead at the scene. Simon Girod later died in hospital. The Jay County Coroner confirmed that all four victims suffered multiple blunt force trauma injuries.
Donald Stepp underwent surgery overnight and is in stable but critical condition. The fifth passenger is being treated at Fort Wayne Lutheran Hospital.
The Stepp family would like to express their gratitude to the community for their prayers, appeals and support during this unimaginable time. A GoFundMe was created to help with medical and recovery expenses.
Beshekeyev and Pretorius were not injured.
The Indiana State Police Critical Incident Reconstruction Team is investigating along with the ISP Commercial Vehicle Division and Jay County authorities.
truck
The logo is a giveaway.
Months were spent investigating a network of trucking companies operating in the Chicago metropolitan area that shared addresses, phone numbers, brands and, I now know, the same trucks operating under different Department of Transportation numbers. The triangular mountain logo on Freightliner showed up dozens of times in my research.
Indiana State Police have not officially identified the carrier operating the truck involved in Tuesday’s crash. But this sign belongs to a network I’ve been documenting, operator after operator, crash after crash, breach after breach.
Four people are now dead.
network
Let me show you what it looks like to hide in plain sight.
Sam Express Inc. (USDOT 3235924) is headquartered in Palatine, IL. Its main official is listed as Saipidin Tutashov.
Read the surname again: Tutashov.
Now look at these operators:
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Tutash Express Company (USDOT 3487141)
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Tutash Express 1 LLC (USDOT 4005857)
The network is actually named after the operator of Sam Express. They didn’t even try to hide it.
Every one of the names of the officers such as Tutashov, Zalardin Ulu, Musaev, Murzapazilov, Aristanikulov, etc. was Kyrgyz. The names come from Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country whose phone number (+996) appears publicly on Sam Express’s website and social media.
It doesn’t stop in Illinois. Sam Express Corp is registered as a foreign corporation in California, with a registered agent named Ruslanbek Olzhebaev, another Kyrgyz name on the documents.
The driver who killed four people on Tuesday? Bekzhan Beshekeyev. It is also a Kyrgyz name.
This is a pipeline.
139 shared truck shell grabbing game
Federal carrier registration data shows AJ Partners LLC (USDOT 3617842) has shared 139 vehicle identification numbers with Tutash Express Inc (USDOT 3487141).
139 trucks have been inspected under two DOT numbers.
AJ Partners also shares 36 VINs (USDOT 3487333) with KG Line Group.
This is the textbook definition of what FMCSA calls a chameleon operator network: multiple agencies sharing equipment, drivers and management while maintaining separate DOT numbers so that when one agency accumulates too many violations or crashes, they can move operations to another agency.
According to the Government Accountability Office, chameleon carriers are three times more likely to be involved in serious accidents than legitimate operators. From 2005 to 2010, the Government Accountability Office found that 18 percent of airlines with chameleon attributes had serious accidents, compared with only 6 percent of new applicants without these red flags.
Safety records 98 accidents and counting
Ninety-one crashes. Nearly a hundred incidents occurred in operator networks that shared the same equipment, the same officers, and the same Kyrgyz recruitment channels.
This is what was recorded. That’s exactly why it entered the FMCSA database.
Tutash Express 1: Destroyed agencies still reporting mileage
Want to see how broken the system is?
The operating authority of Tutash Express 1 LLC (USDOT 4005857) was involuntarily revoked on July 26, 2024.
This means FMCSA has determined that the carrier should not operate on public roadways.
However, according to federal records:
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The carrier updated its MCS-150 form in January 2026, six months after revocation
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128,962 miles reported in 2025 while operating under revoked authority
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Vehicle scrapping rate is 100%; every vehicle inspected has been taken out of service
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Despite only having 4 inspections, it has been involved in 3 accidents
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Its listed shipments include “Amazon Drop & Hook.”
How do you report mileage for a year you were not authorized to operate? How to ship Amazon goods without a valid authorization?
The principal officer of Tutash Express 1 LLC is Sultan D. Musaev.
Stop service rates. Failure to pass inspections in various places
When a truck or driver is placed “out of service” during a roadside inspection, it means their violation is serious enough that they cannot legally continue until repairs are made or the violation is corrected.
AJ Partners Failed Vehicle Inspection Rate 25% improvement Higher than the national average. A quarter of the trucks inspected were taken out of service.
These trucks have the same VIN and operate under multiple DOT numbers throughout the network.
Address question 310 Truck from suburban house
Federal regulations require motor vehicle operators to maintain a principal place of business where records are kept and management decisions are made.
KG Line Group (USDOT 3487333) lists a residential address for its headquarters in Streamwood, Illinois, a single-family home that it says is an operations center for more than 300 trucks and 300 drivers.
Try installing 300 driver qualification files, 300 drug test records, 300 hour service logs, and 300 vehicle maintenance files in a suburban garage. Try to have meaningful safety supervision at the dinner table.
Multiple operators within this network share terminal addresses:
Terminal 1, 2064 W 167th St, Markham, IL:
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DVL Express/Dovgal Express Company
Terminal 2, 10 Gougar Rd, Joliet, IL:
Tutash Express is present in both terminals.
Kyrgyzstan connections
Sam Express Corp publicly displays Kyrgyzstan’s phone number on its website and social media: +996 997 77-55-55. The country code +996 is Kyrgyzstan.
The website displays the American and Kyrgyzstan flags.
This is not hidden. It’s not something I have to dig into. It’s right there on their public Facebook page.
It means an active overseas dispatch operation and a driver recruitment channel connecting Kyrgyzstan to the Chicago area trucking operations.
Recruiting foreign drivers is not illegal. Nearly 19% of U.S. truck drivers are foreign-born. But when compared to:
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Share equipment across multiple DOT numbers
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Executives whose names literally spell out the names of other companies
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Residential address for fleet of 300 trucks
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Vehicle outage rate 100%
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Destroyed authorities still reporting mileage
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More than 91 network crashes
… It paints a picture of a sophisticated operation designed to evade regulatory oversight.
What FMCSA should do
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has tools specifically designed for this:
Program ARCHI (Application Review and Chameleon Investigation): Screens new applicants by matching registration data to existing carriers, looking for common addresses, phone numbers, names, email addresses and VINs.
Safety Suitability Determination: FMCSA may issue out-of-service orders to carriers that pose an imminent hazard.
Shared ownership review: Investigators can check whether multiple agencies share management, drivers or equipment.
question? The tools, including humans, are overwhelmed.
In 2021 alone, FMCSA granted 109,340 new carrier authorizations, an 84% increase from the previous year. If just 1% had chameleon traits, that would potentially put 1,100 unsafe vehicles on the road every year.
The bad guys know the system is overwhelmed. They register multiple permissions like a burner phone, use them until they warm up, and then switch to the next one.
Meanwhile, a network operating 139 shared trucks across multiple DOT numbers remains in operation despite 91 crashes on its record, with officials’ last names spelling out the company’s name.
Labor cost
Henry Eichel was 50 years old. He was riding with his two sons, Menno, 25, and Paul, 19, and a family friend, Simon Girod, 23. On Tuesday afternoon, they headed somewhere together in rural Indiana.
The semitrailer did not stop. This is the proximate cause.
Behind that driver is an aircraft carrier. Behind the operator is a network. Behind the network is a regulatory system that has warned against chameleon carriers for more than a decade, even as the problem has moved on.
Fatal crashes involving large trucks increased by 26.4% from 2016 to 2022. Nearly 5,500 people die in truck accidents each year. The vast majority of victims are not truck drivers, and 82% of those killed in large truck accidents are people in other vehicles, pedestrians or cyclists.
Men like Henry, Menno, Paul, and Simon.
Jay County’s Amish community doesn’t seek media attention. They don’t file lawsuits. They grieve, bury their dead, and move on.
How many more?
what’s next
The Indiana State Police investigation remains ongoing. The ISP has not yet officially identified the operator operating the faulty vehicle.
I will continue to analyze VIN cross data, company filings, and inspection records to map the full scope of this network. Illinois Secretary of State corporate records are being pulled to obtain officer names, registered agents and dates of incorporation.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
Four people died. Ninety-one accidents were recorded. One hundred and thirty-nine trucks operate in various capacities.
Someone has to answer this question.
Sources and data
Crash details:
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Indiana State Police press release, February 4, 2026
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Business Review (Portland, IN)
Federal Safety Data:
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FMCSA SAFER Database (safer.fmcsa.dot.gov)
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FMCSA SMS Security Measurement System
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Carrier registration and inspection records accessed in February 2026
The U.S. Government Accountability Office reports:
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GAO-12-364: “Motor Carrier Security: New Applicant Review Should Expand to Identify Freight Carriers Evading Detection” (March 2012)
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GAO-15-433T: “Motor Carrier Safety: Improved data-driven oversight could better target high-risk carriers” (March 2015)
FMCSA reports:
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Implementing a method to identify chameleon carriers: a report to Congress
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Pocket Guide to Large Truck and Bus Statistics 2024
VIN cross data:
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AJ Partners LLC
↔
Tutash Express Inc: 139 shared VINs
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AJ Partners LLC
↔
KG Line Group Inc: 36 shared VINs
develop
Other records under review:
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Illinois Secretary of State Corporation Filing
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Federal Court Case: Commercial Credit Group Inc v. Dovgal Express Inc, et al. (N.C. IL 2024)
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ProPublica PPP Loan Database
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FMCSA Inspection Records Cross-Referenced with VIN
Last updated: February 4, 2026 at 9:00 pm (ET)
Indiana’s fourth truck fatality exposes once again the chameleon transportation network. appeared first on FreightWaves.