Posted on 04/20/2019 6:42:40 AM PDT by Libloather
The heist began with a thief backing a large, white box truck up behind a Virginia mall around 3:30 a.m. one day in early April, according to a search warrant. The man wasn’t looking for cash or electronics, but something stranger: used cooking grease.
He siphoned about 150 gallons of the stinking, viscous liquid from a dumpster behind a Burger King, before a police officer patrolling Annandale Shopping Center busted him, according to the search warrant, filed in Fairfax County.
The crime is not new, but law enforcement officials say thieves are targeting the stuff used to make french fries and fried chicken anew because of a run-up in biodiesel prices in the past couple of years. Cooking grease can be turned into the fuel, creating a surprisingly lucrative black market for a substance most people wouldn’t touch.
(Excerpt) Read more at houmatoday.com ...
I'm sure that the NRA is against the bartender eliminating all cattle.
How can they call him a thief if he was getting it out of a dumpster?
Finally. An issue the entire nation can get on board with. The NRA prevention of theft of cooking grease.
sounds like a slippery slope though...
Why don’t the restaurants sell it to the recyclers?
Not just a regular dumpster, it’s one specifically for grease. And a contractor pays to haul the stuff away.
It’s stored in a container out by the regular trash dumpsters. Companies come an collect it for recycling/reuse.
It’s not really “trash”.
Oh. Just finished reading the article. Please excuse.
It’s an outside grease container, not a dumpster. Here’s an excerpt from the website of the container owner:
Lost revenue due to used grease theft is a serious problem. When grease is stolen from a foodservice location, the restaurant loses the revenue, and so does Valley Proteins, Inc. Together, we can take measures to stop grease theft and protect the safety of foodservice employees.
Used grease has become a valuable resource that is used to produce biofuels. Valley Proteins pays our foodservice customers for their used cooking oil to produce valuable animal feed ingredients and biofuels. As the value for the used grease increases, grease thieves and “pirate” restaurant services companies steal the grease from our outside grease containers.
Valley Proteins works closely with law enforcement agencies to prosecute grease thieves who steal this valuable commodity. We work with federal and state law enforcement agencies to educate them about the grease theft problem and how to identify perpetrators. Astute restaurant employees are also helpful in identifying and reporting grease theft. The information they provide has resulted in numerous arrests and convictions.
Somehow I can't fathom placing that kind of value on old used cooking grease that can't be used for food any more.
One man's trash, another man's treasure, I guess, although if you can burn it for heat, it would save you quite a bit in heating costs.
Thieves just recycling the old, used cooking grease Americans won't recycle.
Wait. It sounds like the crime boss is making a lot more than the criminal. Does AOC know about this? Shouldn’t there be a Minimum Cut?
Ooops, strike that last comment of mine.
I had no idea there was that much of a market for spent grease.
There is only one way to stop this heinous crime. Bake everything.
It’s perfectly good, reusable long chain polymers.
CC
See, that’s what you get when you don’t read the article. :)
Grease is the word
It’s got groove it’s got meaning
Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion
Now, grease is the way we are feeling
Sure you can make 10k a night for getting grease out of a dumpster...but the people that ultimately are willing to pay for the grease can’t be bothered to go to the restaurants that throw it out and offer to buy it...they find it cheaper and easier to work some crime network....uhm...yeah....
Why don’t the restaurants sell it to the recyclers?
They do. But pick up happens once a week or three depending on the contract and the tank size/volume. Meanwhile the target sits accumulating and tempting thievery.
At $10K per night you could hire a bunch of lookouts and spot a cop car a mile away. This story smells rancid.
10K....what a crock. That would be about 10,000 gallons a night, and would require at least 2 full size tanker trucks with internal heaters to unload it.
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