Feb. 20, 2018 A truck driver is accused of trying to get thousands of dollars in ransom in exchange for delivering a trailer he’d been hired to transport.
An arrest warrant filed Tuesday in Northwest District Court charged Michael Fisher, 39, with class A felony theft, saying he refused to return a trailer worth $75,000 until he was paid $2,000.
Fisher, who is the owner and operator of Great American Transport, was hired by R&R Oilfield Services to move a flatbed trailer loaded with oilfield equipment from Arnegard to Monohan, Texas, according to an affidavit of probable cause. He picked up the trailer Dec. 26, and the next day called the company that had hired him to say the trailer had broken down in Bismarck and was in for repairs.
On Dec. 29, he called the company again and said he’d paid more than $1,900 for the repairs and asked to be reimbursed, charging documents state. Police say the garage Fisher said he had the work done at doesn’t exist in Bismarck, and that Fisher was actually at a different garage in Bismarck having work done on his truck, rather than the trailer.
Later on Dec. 29, Fisher demanded more than $4,000 for storage, fuel and mileage, according to court records. He changed the price several times, asking for $2,000 and then $3,000.
On Jan. 2, an employee from R&R Oilfield Services asked Fisher to tell him where the trailer was so someone from the company could pick it up, an investigator wrote in the affidavit of probable cause. Fisher said it was in Grand Junction, Colorado, but wouldn’t give an exact location without being paid.
Police say they pulled the GPS tracking on Fisher’s truck and that he never went to Colorado.
Fisher called twice more to try and get money in exchange for telling where the trailer was being kept, according to court documents, and on Jan. 31 he told the company the trailer was in Minot. The Ward County Sheriff’s Office recovered the trailer where Fisher said it would be.
If convicted, Fisher could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. No hearing has been set in the case and as of Tuesday afternoon, Fisher had not been arrested.
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