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Freedom Fuel won praise from Trump for selling below market price gas. Now a supplier said it got gas it didn’t pay for | CNN Business
There’s a lawsuit alleging that the company that bought the fuel for Freedom Fuel Network did not pay for $4 million worth of gasoline it purchased from a supplier last month.
The mystery of how a chain of gas stations was able to sell below the market rate has gotten a bit more interesting.
Freedom Fuel Network, an upstart chain of gas stations mostly in the Philadelphia area, got a lot of attention — and praise from President Donald Trump — for selling gasoline at about 50 cents a gallon less than the local market in July. At the time, gas prices were up more than 30% from a year earlier.
The company had long remained mum as to how it was able to sell gasoline for so much cheaper than competitors or how long it intended to do so.
Now, there’s a lawsuit alleging that the company that bought the fuel for Freedom Fuel Network did not pay for $4 million worth of gasoline it purchased from a supplier last month.
The suit was filed on August 19 in US District Court in Eastern Pennsylvania by Manfield Oil Company of Gainesville, Georgia. The company’s attorney, Urs Broderick Furrer, told CNN that at least 1.12 million gallons of gas deliveries were made to at least 10 Freedom Fuel stations.
The suit does not name Freedom Fuel as a defendant. The defendants include a company called KRSM, which made the fuel purchase, and its president, Syed Kazmi.
“Despite the fact that the last delivery was more than five weeks ago, KRSM has not paid one dollar towards the $4,000,000 that KRSM owes Mansfield,” Furrer told CNN in an email.
The suit says that KRSM is a foreign corporation with a principal business address in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
KRSM’s attorney, Mauro Tucci, disputed the allegations in the suit and told CNN it intends to fight it, describing it as “an accounting dispute over fuel invoices mis-priced by Mansfield Oil.” He said the company would make no further comment on pending litigation.
Freedom Fuel’s website said it has added four stations to its network since the original 25 were rebranded shortly before the July 4 holiday weekend. Its gas stations were selling gas for $3.48 a gallon, which was well below the $3.99 average in Pennsylvania at that time.
Trump praised them in a Truth Social post in which he said Freedom Fuel was “taking the lead, and others should follow. They are doing this because they love the USA.”
In the July 1 post, he also promised that “Gas prices will soon be back to the record low prices Americans enjoyed at the pump before our very successful ‘excursion’ in Iran.”
But the war in Iran has dragged on, and the national average remains above $4.00, coming in at $4.08 on Monday, according to data from AAA. The Pennsylvania average stood at $4.22. And Freedom Fuel Stations are also up, with several in Philadelphia suburbs listed on gas price tracker GasBuddy as selling gas for $3.99 a gallon.
Even when Trump was praising Freedom Fuel, the White House was insisting that there was no connection between the Trump administration and Freedom Fuel, which it described as “a private company with no government support or subsidies.”
“The administration is not involved in the company, nor has the administration given the company any funding. There is no other entity or person subsidizing the lower gasoline costs,” a White House spokesperson told CNN. “They are simply reducing their margin to make prices at the pump more affordable for drivers in Philadelphia and New Jersey.”
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