Fort Kent man gets probation in fraud

BANGOR – A Fort Kent man was sentenced Tuesday to five years probation for mail fraud in U.S. District Court.

Gordon Pelletier, 43, also was ordered to pay Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Co. nearly $17,000 in restitution.

Pelletier, who has owned and operated a trucking firm since 1976 in Aroostook County, was injured on the job in 1998, according to his attorney, Terence Harrigan of Bangor. He collected workers’ compensation that year, but began working sporadically the next year.

During 1999, Pelletier hired a few workers to drive logs into Canada. He compensated employees and paid off business loans but did not pay himself a salary, Harrigan said Tuesday. When he received a MEMIC employee status report in January 2000, he mistakenly stated that he had not received any benefit from his business in the previous year.

Harrigan said that Pelletier did not understand that even though he did not receive a salary that year, he derived a benefit from the business and it was not his intent to defraud MEMIC.

U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock accepted the recommendation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office that Pelletier be sentenced to probation rather than jail time.