Dive Brief:
- Daniel Rosales, 45, of Baldwin Park, CA has been charged with felony recycling fraud and attempted grand theft after the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) discovered used beverage containers in his truck for which Rosales had no documentation required to transport them into California.
- Following his arrest and impoundment of his truck, authorities learned that Rosales was hauling 6,622 pounds of aluminum and 2,606 pounds of plastic used beverage containers estimated with a $13,550 California Refund Value (CRV). Rosales faces six months to three years in prison if he is sentenced.
- California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) partners with the California Department of Justice and CDFA who investigate and try recycling crimes for CalRecyle. The department also has several training, document overview and monitoring programs aimed to help prevent fraud, such as precertification training and probationary reviews of recycling centers, tracking the nature of imported materials, risk assessment of reimbursement claims among measures.
Dive Insight:
The Rosales crime is CalRecycle’s first fraud case this year, followed by several attempts to cheat the state’s recycled beverage container industry in 2015 . In fact there is a long history of such activity, prompting legal measures including a 2012 bill to identify people who illegally transport recyclables into California. Then, last year, CalRecycle joined forces with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division to further crack down on such activities.
"Truck drivers need to understand that CalRecycle will not tolerate recycling fraud, which essentially steals money from the honest Californians who pay CRV at the cash registers," CalRecycle Director Scott Smithline said. "Anyone who helps these criminal organizations haul out-of-state used beverage containers into our state to make fraudulent CRV redemptions will be caught and punished."
