Kris Bird, co-owner of a fuel truck supply company, was sentenced today to three months in prison and fined $24,000 for his role in a series of criminal conspiracies involving bid rigging, market allocation, and wire fraud that spanned eight years and targeted U.S. government wildfire-fighting contracts.
Bird, 62, was also ordered to forfeit more than $1.5 million in proceeds from his crimes. His sentencing follows a guilty plea in March 2025, just two weeks before his scheduled trial on a seven-count indictment. The charges stem from a multi-agency investigation into fraud and collusion surrounding contracts to provide fuel trucks for U.S. Forest Service operations in Idaho and across the Mountain West.
“Mr. Bird stole taxpayer funds allocated for critical wildfire-fighting efforts protecting the American people to line his own pockets,” said Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “The Trump Antitrust Division’s Procurement Collusion Strike Force and its law enforcement partners will continue the fight to ensure that the fraudulent use of taxpayer money results in incarceration.”
Bird’s sentencing comes just weeks after his co-defendant and fellow company executive, Ike Tomlinson, received a 12-month prison sentence and a $20,000 fine for a leadership role in the same conspiracy. Together, they coordinated bids, carved up markets, and deliberately excluded competitors in an effort to dominate federal wildfire fuel truck contracts between 2015 and 2023.
According to court documents, the conspirators manipulated the bidding process by prearranging prices and determining which company would receive priority in different geographic areas. They further attempted to exclude rival contractors from consideration and filed false certifications with the federal government to conceal their scheme—actions that also constituted wire fraud.
“Bid rigging is not a victimless crime,” said Jason Suffredini, Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at the General Services Administration Office of Inspector General. “It cheats taxpayers and honest contractors who play by the rules.”
In addition to the criminal sentence, Bird and associated entities also agreed in May 2025 to pay $781,186 in a civil settlement with the U.S. government. The agreement resolved claims that Bird and his companies secured contracts using fraudulent means—including falsified certifications and a wrongly obtained Paycheck Protection Program loan.
The investigation was led by the Antitrust Division’s San Francisco Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho, the FBI’s Salt Lake City Field Office, the General Services Administration OIG, and the Department of Agriculture OIG.
The case is part of the Justice Department’s Procurement Collusion Strike Force (PCSF), a national initiative launched in 2019 to combat fraud and antitrust violations in public procurement.
Anyone with information about anticompetitive conduct involving government contracts is encouraged to visit www.justice.gov/procurement-collusion-strike-force.
