The owner of a New Jersey trucking company was arrested on Thursday after racking up more than $1 million dollars in unpaid tolls.
New Jersey State Police say Lester Morales’s Jersey City-based trucking company, EAB Transport LLC/Do It Right Trucking, ran up the seven figure balance over a 13 month period.
According to NJ.com, the company’s trucks went through “more than 100 toll booths a day using a delinquent E-Z Pass account.”
After a two month investigation, authorities learned that Morales was planning to fly to Aruba and arrested him at Newark Airport on Thursday.
Morales was charged with theft of services and held at Middlesex County Jail. He was released and is due back in court in February.
“This is not purposeful fraud,” Morale’s lawyer, Joseph Horn, told reporters. “This is oversight, at worst.”
Horn says it was unnecessary for law enforcement officers to arrest Morales as he was boarding a flight for a “short vacation.”