In New York City region, 32 charged with organized crime actions in waste industry.
Law enforcement officials have indicted 32 people with charges of organized crime’s continued control over commercial waste hauling industry in New York City and parts of New Jersey.
The main indictment charges 12 people with racketeering and asserting illegal control over commercial waste hauling companies, and 17 others with individual acts of extortion, loansharking and other crimes.
Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a news release, “As alleged, organized crime still wraps its tentacles around industries it has fed off for decades, but law enforcement continues to pry loose its grip. Here, as described in the indictments, organized crime insinuated itself into the waste disposal industry throughout a vast swath of counties in New York and New Jersey, and the tactics they used to exert and maintain their control come right out of the mafia playbook – extortion, intimidation and threats of violence.”
Twelve of those charged were members and associates of three families – the Genovese, Gambino and Luchese organized crime families. They are charged with participating in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) enterprise in which they worked together to control various waste disposal businesses in the New York City metropolitan area and multiple counties in New Jersey as the Waste Disposal Enterprise.
The Enterprise was a criminal organization in which the members committed crimes including extortion, loansharking, mail and wire fraud, and stolen property offenses.
The 12 were the leaders of the Enterprise that kept its victims, including small business owners and potential customers, in check by threatening economic and physical harm.
Enterprise members avoided any official connection to the waste disposal businesses they controlled because they either were officially banned from the waste industry or were unlikely to be granted the necessary licenses required to do business because of their connections to organized crime. As a result, Enterprise members concealed themselves behind waste disposal businesses that were officially owned by non-Enterprise members who were able to obtain the necessary licenses because they had no known affiliations with organized crime.
The Washington-based National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA) expressed support for efforts to rid the industry of organized crime.