Darren Berg

Berg was born with the name Frederick Darren Muskopf on May 17, 1962 in Ashland, Oregon, and grew up in Grants Pass, about an hour to the northwest. Darren's sister Wendy described their parents' relationship as abusive. "When he was a tiny boy, and my dad would be beating on my mother, he would crawl under the bed," said Wendy about Darren. Darren's grandfather drove for Greyhound Lines, a fact that Berg would frequently tell MTR Western drivers.

Berg's parents divorced in 1975. After his mother remarried, he changed his last name to match his stepfather's. He enrolled at the University of Oregon in Eugene where he joined and was elected treasurer of Oregon's Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity chapter. Berg later served as president and treasurer of the chapter simultaneously. The chapter accused Berg of embezzling as much as $21,000 of its funds to fund his charter bus company. Berg denied the allegations, left the fraternity, and dropped out of the university.

Berg founded MTR Western in Seattle in 2003 with four Prevost H3-45 motorcoaches. In 2006, he announced a campaign to make MTR Western, which at that time had 300 workers and 167 buses in six cities, carbon neutral. In 2007, Berg identified himself as the general counsel of MTR Western in a hearing about an infraction for which the company had been cited, despite Berg not being a member of the Washington State Bar Association. Berg admitted at the hearing that he was not an attorney but insisted that he had graduated from law school. A Seattle Times reporter could find no record of Berg having obtained any university degree. Berg has falsely claimed to be a lawyer in other contexts as well.

Berg was known for being meticulously attentive to details at MTR Western. He interviewed his drivers personally, bought them uniforms from Nordstrom, and threw lavish holiday parties that one driver described as "legendary". Some of Berg's corporate employees described Berg as being prone to anger, throwing staplers, laptops, or coffee mugs at people who upset him. One employee, who spoke to Seattle Met on condition of anonymity, said that Berg would never admit wrongdoing after such outbursts.

In 2007, Berg founded GeoGenius, a company based in Seattle that produced travel-related audio and video content for GPS-enabled devices.