Worcester Business Journal

6 Worcester Business Journal | August 24, 2026 | wbjournal.com ree former employees are facing criminal charges for embezzlement and fraud, as Turtle Transit founder claims they plundered his company to start rival firm A Hudson business built a reputation as a designer of whimsical vehicles for Dunkin' and L.L. Bean. en, a Dark Horse appeared. BY ERIC CASEY WBJ Managing Editor A self-described dyslexic artist, James Risebor- ough spent two decades building his business from a two-person oper- ation in a Bolton barn into one of the most prominent providers of custom promotional vehicles in the U.S.. Expanding to a 38,000-square-foot facility in Hudson, his firm Turtle Transit built a client roster that read like a who's who of American brands, with its builds including the L.L. Bean Bootmobile and the Planters NUT- mobile. Over the years, Turtle Transit has done work building experiential marketing attractions and custom ve- hicles for clients like the Boston Red Sox, Dunkin', Dell, NASCAR, Red Bull, Kra Foods, and Formula 1. e COVID-19 pandemic took a bite out of business, but Riseborough estimates the firm was worth $3 million to $6 million in 2021, when things started to go astray. Major jobs started going horribly wrong, Riseborough said. Longtime clients stopped returning his calls. Work slowly dried up. Employees began heading for the exits, including shop manager and lead fabricator Raymond Mahon; lead salesperson and project manager Daniel Caron; and Caron's wife, Jennifer Lopez, who led the graphics department. By 2023, bookkeeper and office manager Kimberly Troest had dried away, moving to Florida before leav- ing the company altogether. Risebor- ough, already scrambling to keep the company afloat with his own savings, said none of the passwords she'd le granted access to the financials. Increasingly suspicious, he hired a forensic accountant to examine the books. Riseborough said he soon discovered the company he'd spent more than 20 years building had been hollowed out from within. "Between the building, my savings, and what I could have reasonably got for the company, I could have retired," Riseborough said. Instead, he said he was forced to move forward with a fire sale of the building, selling the company's assets to what had been a rival firm. Today, Caron, Mahon and Troest are facing criminal charges stemming from their time at Turtle Transit and while forming Dark Horse Experien- James Riseborough, head of Turtle Transit, alleges four former employees conspired to plunder his company. PHOTO | EDD COTE

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