Posted on 09/26/2013 7:32:07 PM PDT by rey
SACRAMENTO — California authorities have arrested five people who allegedly bought bottles and cans from recycling centers in Nevada and then redeemed them for cash in California, the California Department of Justice said Thursday.
The suspects were charged with conspiracy, grand theft and recycling fraud as part of the scheme valued at more than $300,000, officials said.
The five arrested — Gerardo Gomez-Vasquez, Magdalena Hernandez-Sebastian, Luis Aguirre-Alacon, Ludin Rosales-Valladares and Elfego Gonzalez-Ramos — are Nevada residents. Authorities say a sixth man, Argelio Hernandez-Torres, remains at large.
(Excerpt) Read more at pressdemocrat.com ...
How is a good illegal immigrant supposed to make a decent living around here? s/ Heck if California in going to pay exorbitant prices for recyclables I might just take some of my Florida trash out there.
Recycling fraud? Whoever heard of that?
I don’t see the problemo. They purchased the cans and bottles legitimately, then cashed them in to be recycled once again. The tree huggers should be proud!
I guess crossing state lines is a no-no.
Committing the recycling fraud that Americans just won’t do!
Sounds like simple arbitrage with garbage
How is this any different than currency arbitrage? Why is this illegal? Is there a law against this in California? How do the CA officials know the crushed glass and AL didn’t really originate in California?
The only thing I DON’T have a question about is the $50 million loss. You can be darn sure that if California passes a law, it WILL cause the state to lose money.
my elderly inlaws up until a couple of yrs ago would save every single soda can all year and when they went to Oregon, they'd turn them all in ...if they got $40 they'd be estatic....
lol, how much you want to bet that they actually haven’t broken any laws.
Interstate commerce and all that, you know the stuff in the Constitution?
Free money, whadya espek? If you want it come and get it, but you’d better hurry ‘coz it may not last!
I’ll tell you about recycling fraud, when I was a little kid in California I would collect bottles wherever I could find them, at that time there was a three cent deposit. When I took a bottle in to a liquor store to recycle it I got three cents for every bottle. Skip forward to today, I pay a five cent deposit on cans and bottles but do I get five cents back for each one? Hell no I don’t, I get whatever the current scrap by weight price is, and it never comes anywhere near five cents. So it’s okay for the state to commit fraud but not others.
Yeah, I find it hard to believe this can be illegal. Do they make you sign a form that you got the bottles in CA. Do you have to prove the can someone threw out of their car was actually purchased in CA?
How does California's attempt to keep out Nevadan garbage not violate the commerce clause of the US Constitution?
Doesn’t it seem a little weird, that every single one of them has two last names?
So what did they do wrong?
I don’t think too many criminals bother with this because the margins are so low. It’s probably much easier and more profitable to steal manhole covers or break into vacant houses and take all the wiring. I mean if you are going to risk getting busted, why not just do a real crime?
Well, they do say, “recycling pays”, right? I’m not seeing a problem here.
The money gotten for returning the cans and bottles is called the CRV, for California Redemption Value. You pay it when you buy the beverage and you get it back when you return the empty. If the bottle is purchased in Nevada and redeemed in California, the person knows that they’re doing something wrong and, yes, illegal.
Recycling centers in CA have signs posted that all recyclables beyond a certain weight limit must be certified (I forget how) that they’re actually CA bottles and cans, specifically to prevent or reduce this kind of fraud.
They took a chance, they got caught, they lose. And I also found it strange that they all have hyphenated last names.
The lesson to be learned here is simple: Bring in just under the legal limit.
It may take a 100 trips, but is it illegal to scam a scammer?
Correctly stated.
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