A Newport Beach man who owns several Inland Empire-based trucking companies was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison for ordering a welder to illegally repair a tanker, resulting in an explosion that killed the worker.
The sentencing marked the second time that Carl Bradley Johansson was found criminally liable for the death of one of his welders. Johansson, now 64, was also sentenced Tuesday for tax evasion and fraudulently obtaining nearly $1 million in COVID-relief money while out on bond in the tanker expulsion case, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office statement.
Johansson, now 64, pleaded guilty last year to multiple felony counts in connection to the fatal tank explosion, tax evasion and the relief money scam. Along with the decade-long prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips ordered Johansson to pay approximately $1.25 million in restitution to two banks and the IRS.
An earlier tanker explosion that led to the death of a worker in 1993 resulted in Johansson being sentenced to 15 months in federal prison.
Prosecutors allege that after his release from prison, Johansson created a Corona-based trucking company called National Distribution Services in order to “illegally operate cargo tanks,” despite two more “welding-caused explosions” in 2012 and 2014.
On May 6, 2014, prosecutors say the trucking company’s management ordered workers to carry out welding work on a tanker that still had crude oil inside of it that hadn’t been fully…
