Despite recent price hikes, the mysterious company is still offering a significant discount at 29 stations across Philadelphia and New Jersey.
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PHILADELPHIA — As a steady stream of drivers pulled into the Freedom Fuel Network’s gas station on Roosevelt Boulevard this week, some pumps still had signs saying “Red Lion,” the station’s brand as recently as last Friday.
Other pumps were freshly pasted with Freedom Fuel’s fierce-eagle logo. But what drivers mainly noticed were the prices: 10 to 20 cents per gallon below other stations.
“It’s awesome,” said Edwin Torres, 29, who works for a rental car company and often stops by to fill up the fleet. “It’s to the point where 20 cents does go a long way.”
The Roosevelt Boulevard station is one of four new locations announced this week by the Freedom Fuel Network, an expansion that deepens the mystery around a company that has revealed little about itself publicly while drawing praise from the White House for its discount gas.
Public documents link the network to a Baltimore Ravens special-teams coach, a New Jersey-based energy investor and a fuel distributor sued repeatedly for unpaid debts and other alleged misconduct, including fraud. Their refusal to talk publicly about the project — and the White House’s promotion of it — has prompted wide scrutiny, including from fuel industry analysts trying to figure out how they manage to sell gas at prices significantly lower than geographic competitors.
When the network launched in early July, it charged $3.47 per gallon (in honor of President Donald Trump, the nation’s 47th president, Trump said). At the time, the price was about 40 cents a gallon below market, according to industry analysts.
On its website, the company said it had experienced “explosive growth — an average volume increase of more than 50 percent, with several locations surging over 100 percent.” At such volumes, according to an analysis created for The Post by FuelTrust, a fuel supply chain technology firm, the company could have been forgoing as much as $24,000 a day in revenue compared with nearby competitors, or as much as $360,000 over the first two weeks.
But then Freedom Fuel’s prices started going up. In late July, many stations were over $4 a gallon. In the past week, the company’s median price settled at $3.89, according to a Post review of GasBuddy listings.
That’s still a good deal — about 25 cents a gallon below the median price at nearby stations. But a few competitors are now matching Freedom Fuel’s prices, a sign that the company is no longer offering confoundingly deep discounts, said Jonathan Arneault, FuelTrust’s founder.
Given the current cost of crude oil and delivery, Arneault said, “the stations can make a profit, barely, at this price.”
Multiple fuel experts said Freedom Fuel may have been passing along savings from cheaper-than-average fuel: Perhaps the company bought it before Trump ordered attacks on Iran in February, when wholesale gasoline cost about $2.10 a gallon rather than the $3.25 being charged in late July. Or perhaps it got a discount from a fuel supplier or delivery service.
“Either the fuel genuinely cost them less than it appeared, or someone else was paying the difference,” said Eliezer Fich, a finance professor at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business who examined the FuelTrust report at The Post’s request. “My analysis of the report does not reveal which.”
Today, “their prices are converging back toward the ordinary market, not holding a fixed gap below it,” Fich added. “That is more what you’d see as cheap fuel runs out.”
The network has declined to shed light on the matter, describing its prices as a simple act of generosity.
Freedom Fuel is “a privately owned and proudly patriotic company” that “answered President Trump’s call to action to lower prices at the pump,” its website says.
“Despite the misinformation and baseless speculation circulating, let us set the record straight: Freedom Fuel Network is proudly lowering its prices to benefit our community and strengthen our local economy. Just like the President, we remain committed to putting America First!”
Freedom Fuel was officially formed on June 25 when two men — Randy Brown and Yoni Gontownik — submitted incorporation documents to the state of Delaware. Within days, it was operating 25 stations across Philadelphia and southern New Jersey.
Brown, 59, has been a kicking specialist with the Ravens for nearly two decades, according to a person involved with the network. He also served three terms as mayor of Evesham, New Jersey, a township about 15 miles east of Philadelphia.
A Republican, he has called himself “a proud Trump supporter” and has flirted with running for higher office, according to the New Jersey Globe, a news site devoted to New Jersey politics. Brown declined to publicly discuss his fuel venture.
Gontownik lives in New Jersey and previously worked for the energy and commodity group Mercuria, which told The Post that it is not involved in the Freedom Fuel Network. Gontownik and his family have been supporters of NORPAC, a pro-Israel organization, as well as politicians in both parties, according to FEC filings. In 2024, Gontownik and his wife hosted a NORPAC event for Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri); the couple also hosted a NORPAC fundraiser for then-Rep. Mark Green (R-Tennessee), according to NORPAC’s website.
Since Gontownik launched the fuel network, much of his online presence has disappeared, including biographical information that once appeared on LinkedIn, the Jewish Link news website and the Org, which hosts a database of publicly available organizational charts. Gontownik did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
With the four new locations, Freedom Fuel now has 29 stations. Until recently, those stations were operating under more than a dozen different brand names including Sunoco, Gas N Go, Karco, Exxon and Liberty.
About a third of the stations have been owned for several years by Blue Owl Capital, a large New York-based investment firm led by billionaires Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz. Lipschultz is a part-owner of the Washington Commanders; Ostrover sold his stake in the team in May. Both have histories of donating to candidates in both parties, though they have given exclusively to Republicans in recent years, according to FEC filings.
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Trump once owned up to $25 million in Blue Owl stock but has sold most of it, according to the president’s most recent financial disclosure. Ostrover and Lipschultz did not respond to requests for comment.
Blue Owl rents the stations to a variety of operators through a “triple-net lease structure” under which the operators pay rent, insurance, maintenance, taxes and other expenses, a Blue Owl spokesperson said. The spokesperson said Blue Owl “is not involved in the tenant’s operations or business decisions.”
At least six Freedom Fuel stations — including five owned by Blue Owl — are managed by brothers Shamikh and Syed Kazmi, according to public records reviewed by The Post. The Associated Press reported that the Kazmis manage a total of 14 Freedom Fuel stations, including eight leased from Blue Owl, but The Post has not independently confirmed the higher number. Neither brother appears to have donated significantly to federal political candidates.
One station managed by Syed Kazmi on Philadelphia’s Bustleton Avenue has an expired fuel dispensing license, failed an inspection during its renewal application and faces closure by Sept. 4, according to city officials.
The Kazmis have marketed themselves as “top tier” petroleum distributors, gas station operators and real estate developers, according to one company website. They and their companies have been sued more than a dozen times for alleged misconduct, including fraud and unpaid debts. In several cases, they drew default judgments after failing to respond to the charges, court records show.
In 2021, Shamikh Kazmi was sued by Petroleum Marketing Group and accused of stealing more than $667,000 worth of fuel over 10 days. In a default judgment entered last November ordering him to repay PMG with interest and help cover its legal fees, a federal judge complained of Shamikh Kazmi’s “blatant disregard” for the court’s orders to produce information. His lawyer in the case declined to comment.
The Kazmis did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Calls to a number associated with the brothers were answered by a person who referred The Post to the Freedom Fuel website. Multiple inquiries submitted to the website went unanswered.
Asked whether the White House has communicated with individuals associated with the network, including Shamikh and Syed Kazmi, a White House official said no one has communicated with Syed but did not comment on communication with Shamikh.
The official said Trump, his family and his businesses have no financial stake in any companies connected to the network. Nor, the official said, does the Trump administration have a partnership with the network, subsidize the discounted fuel or give the company funding.
The official added that “no other entity or person” is subsidizing Freedom Fuel’s low pump prices.
“Freedom Fuel is a patriotic company doing a good thing for drivers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey by lowering their gas prices. They are doing their part to answer the President’s call to lower prices at the pump,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “This retailer is taking the lead, and we hope to see others follow.”
The opening of the Freedom Fuel Network came as a welcome sign at the White House, where Trump had for days expressed frustration with gas prices. His approval rating had fallen as national gas prices climbed above $4.50 a gallon because of the Iran war’s disruption of the global oil market.
In June, oil prices fell after a tenuous ceasefire was reached. And as the Fourth of July holiday approached, Trump demanded in a June 29 Truth Social post that “Gasoline Retailers must get their Prices down, IMMEDIATELY!” He suggested “targeting around the $2.50 a Gallon number.”
Enter Freedom Fuel. On July 1, Trump heralded the new company.
“A VERY smart Retailer, located throughout the Northeast, is stepping up” to lower gas prices, he wrote on Truth Social. “This Retailer is taking the lead, and others should follow. They are doing this because they love the U.S.A.”
National Energy Dominance Council Director Jarrod Agen soon posted photos from one of the stations, arguing that the price of crude oil had dropped to prewar levels and that gas prices across the nation should soon follow.
“Thankfully, one retailer is leading the way,” Agen wrote on LinkedIn.
A few days later, on July 7, the official White House X account posted a video from a Freedom Fuel station featuring grateful customers thanking the president. “It’s President Donald J. Trump leading the charge to lower gas prices right here at Freedom Fuel Network’s gas stations,” a narrator intones.
Since then, a wave of news stories has attempted to shed light on the company. One Pennsylvania Democrat, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, dismissed it as “a PR stunt of some sort,” telling the Philadelphia Inquirer that it was “designed to distract people from the fact that gas prices have gone up because the president started a war against Iran.”
Except for statements on its website, the Freedom Fuel Network has remained silent.
Industry analysts say the mystery of how Freedom Fuel can offer such low prices has gotten less mysterious as its prices have increased. But it remains to be seen, they said, how long the company can continue to offer gas even at its current prices.
Despite recent hikes, Freedom Fuel is still selling some of the cheapest gas in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey — and well below Thursday’s national average of $4.06 a gallon.
Drivers don’t seem to care about the mystery. On Monday, Anthony Henderson, 28, dropped by the newly rebranded Freedom Fuel station on Roosevelt Boulevard to fill up his father’s car. An active-duty service member in the U.S. Navy, he had flown to Philadelphia for the weekend to visit family.
Though he’d never heard of Freedom Fuel, Henderson said he was happy to find the cheap gas.
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“I’m definitely grateful,” he said. “I’ll definitely come back to this one.”
Cat Zakrzewski and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
