Jasbir Thandi Pleads Guilty to $38.8M Trucking Insurance Fraud

What did Jasbir Thandi actually do to Global Hawk Insurance?

Jasbir Thandi controlled every piece of Global Hawk Insurance Company Risk Retention Group. He was president, treasurer, director, and sole stockholder of the managing general agent that issued the policies and collected the premiums. Between 2016 and 2020, according to his July 2025 guilty plea in Oakland federal court, he borrowed $14 million from Stifel Bank & Trust in Global Hawk's name without board authorization, sent all but $175,000 to his own brokerage account, then paid the loan back with $10.7 million of the insurer's money. He wired $3.1 million to his real estate company. He sent $1.2 million to an entity he controlled in the British Virgin Islands. He spent more than $1.5 million on a house and a luxury vehicle.

Covering the hole required paperwork. Vermont regulators had asked Global Hawk to shore up its capital, so Thandi reported $13.6 million in contributions in 2017. The liquidator later compared the deposit receipts sent to Vermont against the real bank statements. Where the receipts said $3,000,000, the bank said $300. Where they said $3,600,000, the bank said $360. Where they said $1,000,000, the bank said $100. Somebody was photocopying deposit slips and adding zeros.

The 2018 annual statement, signed under oath by Thandi and his vice president Sandeep Sahota, told Vermont the company held $44.9 million in cash at Stifel. The real combined balance was about $12.1 million. By the 2019 statement, it claimed $17.9 million at Stifel, in accounts that had been closed for nearly a year.

How many policies did Global Hawk hide from regulators?

Vermont had capped Global Hawk at $15.5 million in new business for 2019. So more than 500 policies simply never made it into the company's records. The liquidator found them by comparing FMCSA's insurance filing database against the broker's own files: 512 policies, prefixes such as CALQ and NVLQ, the first effective in June 2019. More than half of all the new policies issued in Global Hawk's final 11 months were off the books. Real trucks, real filings with the FMCSA, real certificates in the hands of shippers and brokers, and no insurer behind them who knew they existed.

Vermont seized the company on May 20, 2020, and a state court ordered liquidation on June 8. Global Hawk's last annual statement had claimed $42.7 million in assets. The banks held $609,481. The liquidation order described the 1,008 trucks then on Global Hawk paper as effectively uninsured.

What happened to the crash victims?

On July 2, 2026, Judge Jon Tigar entered a stipulated restitution order of $38,829,382, split 85.5% to the Vermont liquidator and 14.5% to the Texas receiver for Houston General Insurance Exchange, the second insurer Thandi defrauded. Vermont's accounting tallies $38.5 million in Global Hawk liabilities, most of it policy claims, against roughly $5.2 million recovered: $1.5 million in cash found at liquidation, a $3.7 million settlement from Lloyd's of London, and $55,000 from investment adviser Jaspreet Padda, who got 30 months in prison in May 2026. Everything else hinges on collecting restitution from a 70-year-old defendant whose lawyers filed a 2024 declaration supporting his request for appointed counsel because he could no longer pay them.

In the same fraud, run by the same man, the Texas victims were paid, and the trucking victims were not. Houston General was a traditional insurer, so when it collapsed, the Texas Property and Casualty Insurance Guaranty Association stepped in and paid $4.8 million in claims. Global Hawk was a risk retention group, and federal law, 15 U.S.C. 3902, bars RRGs from every state guaranty fund in America. No backstop exists. When an RRG dies, the crash victims stand in a liquidation line behind the lawyers and the accountants, and they take whatever fraction is left.

A database of the three failed trucking RRGs (Global Hawk, Spirit Commercial Auto, and Federal Motor Carriers) covers 19,588 carriers that were insured by them at some point, with 49,812 crashes, 1,478 of them fatal, 1,770 people killed, and 23,519 injured across those carriers' recorded histories. Global Hawk's book was the largest: 10,333 carriers. Those carriers account for 16,161 recorded crashes, 533 of them fatal, 644 deaths, and 7,388 injuries. 417 of those carriers have at least one fatal crash in their records.

Why are 131 active carriers still showing Global Hawk insurance filings?

Of the 10,333 carriers Global Hawk insured, 3,460 are still active in the federal carrier census today. 2,748 of them show an insurance filing of record in the federal system from Global Hawk itself, including 131 carriers whose census records are active today. The insurer has been dead for six years. The paper does not know it, and neither does anyone relying on the paperwork.

Every crash victim who had a claim pending against a Global Hawk insured in June 2020 learned the same lesson James Richardson learned on the Spirit side: he won a $1 million settlement against a Spirit-insured carrier in Illinois and collected nothing, because the insurance behind it had already been spent. An Illinois appellate court called it a great unfairness and said the law gave it no remedy. That is still the law. Nothing enacted since 2020 screens who may form or run a risk retention group, nothing stops the operator of a failed one from chartering the next one, and nothing gives the family of someone killed by an RRG-insured truck a dollar of protection when the RRG turns out to be a photocopier and a story.

What criminal penalties did the defendants get?

All four criminal defendants have pleaded guilty. Padda got 30 months in May 2026. Gunjan Aggarwal got 18 months in April 2026. Sahota is sentenced on Aug. 14, 2026, and Thandi on Aug. 28, 2026. A federal court in Vermont entered a $66.7 million default judgment against Thandi and Global Century Insurance Brokers in 2023. The liquidator has also sued Crowe LLP, the national accounting firm that issued clean audit opinions on Global Hawk's financial statements. Crowe denies liability, the case survived summary judgment motions this spring, and it remains unresolved.

What verification should carriers run on their insurance now?

If you are insured by a risk retention group, verify the company is still solvent. Check the domicile state's insurance department website for the RRG's current status. Call the state regulator if the website does not list it. If your insurer is a Vermont RRG, check the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation's captive insurance division. If the company is under supervision, in receivership, or has had its license suspended, your coverage may not be valid even if you paid your premium.

Verify your insurance filing in the FMCSA system matches the policy you hold. Log into the FMCSA registration system and confirm the insurer name, policy number, and effective dates match your actual policy documents. If they do not match, or if the filing shows an insurer you did not purchase coverage from, contact the FMCSA immediately.

If you are a broker or shipper accepting a certificate of insurance, do not rely on the FMCSA filing alone. Call the insurance company directly using a phone number you look up independently, not the number on the certificate. Confirm the policy is active, the coverage limits are correct, and the named insured matches the carrier you are contracting with. 2,748 carriers still show Global Hawk filings six years after the company died. The database does not clean itself.