A big rig struck a Honda Accord on Interstate 71 near Columbus at 1 a.m. on July 5. Toby Forsythe, 21, died in the crash. He studied economics and played goalie for the men’s soccer team at UMass Lowell.
Police identified the truck’s driver as Bekhzod Asrarov, 42, of Maineville, Ohio. Court documents state that Asrarov could not communicate in English.
Officers say he tried to hide his dash cam, and he faces a charge of tampering with evidence. He has not entered a plea.
Asrarov entered the United States in 2024 through the diversity visa lottery during President Joe Biden’s administration. He held an Ohio commercial driver’s license.
His home village has about 1,500 residents and sits roughly 25 miles from Middletown, the hometown of Vice President JD Vance.
Federal registrations list 267 active trucking companies in Maineville.
The New York Post reviewed U.S. Department of Transportation records for carriers across Butler and Warren counties.
Dozens of Uzbek-owned companies there list shared residential addresses, according to the review.
Badri B LLC reported to the DOT that it owns 23,001 trucks. The filing lists a single apartment in Loveland, Ohio.
Shod Express LLC operates from one apartment unit in West Chester. DOT records show it reported 41 million miles in 2025 across 52 drivers.
That averages about 854,000 miles per driver. Industry experts say a hard-running solo driver covers closer to 110,000 miles in a year.
Phoenix Cargo, based in Circleville, reported nearly 80 million miles in 2026 across 395 trucks.
One West Chester address hosts sixteen companies. In Maineville, 22 residential addresses each hold two or more registered carriers.
Industry experts say that pattern matches “chameleon companies.”
These operators register a new company with the DOT, usually using the same address and phone number, to leave behind a poor safety record.
One local resident described the practice to The Post.
“When [a trucking company] has too many violations, and they can’t get any more loads because they’re flagged as an unsafe carrier, they will just open a new company so they can keep going,” the resident claimed.
Tom Balzer, president of the Ohio Trucking Association, a nonprofit trade group, said drivers send his organization footage of the tactics.
“I’ve never seen it this bad or this blatant. We get videos all the time from drivers at truck stops filming somebody literally tearing off the [vehicle identification] numbers on the side of their truck and putting a new one on,” he told The Post.
Balzer said carriers inflate mileage or truck counts to appear safer while they compete for loads.
Federal agencies have responded.
In late August, the DOT and the Department of Homeland Security launched a joint effort targeting non-citizen truckers who hold non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses.
Officials announced they closed 270 CDL schools over safety violations, missing facilities and failures to meet English proficiency requirements.
Federal officials say crashes involving non-domiciled truckers killed at least 30 people in 2025.
Other cases connect to the region.
In February, Bekzhan Beishekeev, 30, of Kyrgyzstan drove into a van carrying 15 Amish construction workers just across the Indiana line from Butler County.
Four of them died. Beishekeev obtained his CDL in Pennsylvania and faces multiple felony charges.
Federal prosecutors indicted Bekhzod Rakhmatov, 30, an Uzbek national from Maineville, last year in a human smuggling scheme.
Authorities say he arranged international transit and border entry for migrants. He faces up to 10 years in prison.
A source told The Post he allegedly received up to $20,000 for each person he smuggled. Rakhmatov has not entered a plea.
In August, a jury found Maineville trucker Shakrat Abshukurov, 44, guilty of kidnapping and raping a 13-year-old girl in 2019. Abshukurov spoke no English.
Residents also describe daily disruptions. They say semis have cut across yards and flattened mailboxes.
Noise and pollution from 200 big rigs parked at a rental lot on Grandin Road led the local township to halt a planned expansion.
One resident claimed that men sit in their trucks outside a gym and a second-hand clothing shop, watch young girls and have solicited some for sex.
Ohio requires English proficiency for a license and does not issue CDLs to non-citizens.
A community source told The Post that Maineville drivers organize rides to a DMV in Coney Island, Brooklyn, to obtain theirs.
The source said New York issues CDLs to illegal immigrants.
Screenshots from a Maineville trucker group chat show drivers warning one another about roadside immigration checkpoints and English proficiency inspections.
In April, the DOT announced it would withhold more than $73 million in federal highway funding from New York for refusing to revoke CDLs issued to foreign nationals.
A spokesman for Gov. Kathy Hochul responded to The Post.
“CDL policy is set in Washington, not Albany, and New York follows these federally-issued rules when issuing commercial drivers licenses, something that even the Trump Administration has acknowledged.”
Overdrive reported that inspectors pulled 10,000 drivers out of service nationwide last year for not speaking English.
DOT figures show 200,000 more migrant truckers could lose their licenses after the administration tightened CDL rules in March.
None of the named trucking companies responded to The Post’s requests for comment.
