Two Charged In Federal Indictment With Dumping E-Waste Illegally Overseas
The top two executives from Evergreen, Colo.-based Executive Recycling Inc. each face up to 52 years in prison on wire fraud and other charges stemming from allegations they illegally shipped hundreds of thousands of lead-laden CRTs and other e-waste to China, according to a federal indictment handed down Thursday in U.S. District Court in Denver. Executive Recycling was the firm profiled in the November 2008 60 Minutes expose on clandestine e-waste exports to developing countries.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Executive Recycling CEO Brandon Richter and Vice President of Operations Tor Olson shipped more than 300 container-loads of e-waste to China between 2005 and 2008, the indictment said. “Approximately 160 of these exported cargo containers contained a total of more than 100,000 CRTs.” Richter and Olson did so in violation of the federal Resource Conversation and Recovery Act, which bars “the export of hazardous waste to another country without first filing with the EPA a written notification of intent to export and obtaining the consent of the receiving country,” the indictment said. Neither Richter nor Olson nor their attorneys responded to our requests for comment on the indictment.
Richter and Olson “knowingly devised and intended to devise a scheme to defraud various business and government entities who wanted to dispose of their e-waste,” the indictment said. They pocketed $1.8 million by selling the e-waste to unscrupulous “brokers” in China, collecting the money through international and interstate wire transfers, it said. They also “falsely advertised to customers that they would dispose of e-waste in compliance with all local, state and federal laws and regulations,” it said. They also “falsely represented” that they would not send the e-waste overseas and falsified records to thwart investigators, it said. Prosecutors won’t seek to have Richter or Olson jailed while they await trial, the indictment said.
The Basel Action Network, which originally investigated Executive Recycling and later persuaded CBS to run the 60 Minutes segment, hailed the indictment as “the first instance that criminal charges have been brought against an e-waste exporter.” The indictment “is a major victory for global environmental justice,” said BAN Executive Director Jim Puckett. “Even before we have a U.S. law in place to explicitly prohibit this dumping on developing countries, the U.S. government’s criminal justice system has recognized the massive toxic trade we first discovered in 2001 as fraudulent, as smuggling, and as an environmental crime. Now these sham recyclers are warned: their shameful practices can land them in jail."
Executive Recycling “is just the tip of the e-waste iceberg,” said Puckett. “They are but one of hundreds of fake recyclers who sell greenness and responsibility but in fact practice global dumping. This is why we must pass federal legislation prohibiting this activity."
"This is great work by the federal agencies to bring these criminal charges against a fake recycler -- one who looked right into 60 Minutes’ TV cameras and denied being an exporter,” said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition. It’s a “common practice” in the industry to export e-waste to developing nations without any concern for the harm it causes, she said. “But currently it’s only illegal to export CRTs from the U.S. -- not the lengthy list of other e-waste that we are currently dumping on poor countries abroad,” Kyle said. She urged Congress to pass legislation “that would make all this e-waste dumping illegal.” The CEA declined comment on the indictment. The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries didn’t comment by our deadline.