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Brothers plead guilty to role in used vegetable-oil ring
By adamg on Tue, 09/16/2014 - 9:58am
Two Cranston, RI men could get up to five years in the pen for a scheme in which an employee of theirs drove around Rhode Island and the Boston area, siphoning used cooking oil from holding tanks behind restaurants and then selling the liquid to a New Hampshire company that processed it into biodiesel.
Under a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Andrew Jeremiah, 78, and Bruce Jeremiah, 72, will also lose the 1984 Ford F700 truck they outfitted with a tank and a special muffler to reduce the sounds of pumping.
The employee, Anthony Simone, Sr., 60, of Cranston, pleaded guilty last month and will be sentenced on Oct. 1.
According to the indictment against the three, the Jeremiahs sent Simone out on nightly runs to various areas - including Rte. 1 through Walpole, Norwood and Dedham - to siphon out oil. The indictment says he was actually stopped twice - once by a worker at a Westborough Chinese restaurant, who stopped him and took down his registration number, and once for a traffic infraction in Mattapoisett, for which police briefly impounded the vehicle without realizing it was carrying several hundred gallons of stolen cooking oil.
Used cooking oil was once a waste product that restaurants had to pay to have taken away, but in recent years, it has become a revenue source as processors buy it to make biodiesel.
The indictment contains snippets of conversations between the brothers and Simone, including this sage advice:
You can't be stupid and lazy and keep being a criminal. That's how, that's how people get caught.
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 Cooking oil indictment | 408.64 KB |
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Comments
Would the oil have otherwise been thrown away?
If so, seems like these folks were doing a public service to the environment, though not in the most straightforward or ethical manner.
Oil waste is a valuable commodity
It wouldn't have been thrown away. The contracting company would have used it to create secondary biofuel, most likely for heating oil.
So, yes, it is stealing from those who were already doing that public service.
No, that's why they were charged
Restaurants now collect the stuff and sell it to processors, who turn it into biodiesel. According to the Providence Journal, they can get $1.40 a gallon.
No. In the olden days yes,
No. In the olden days yes, but not anymore.
Some places use it for heaters and generators
In New England, where oil heat is quite common, a number of restaurants have modified their oil heat systems to take their own waste oil. They accumulate it during the summer, and use it during the winter. Instead of selling it at $1 a gallon, they use it to replace $3-4 a gallon heating oil.
This place offers a system for running a diesel generator off of waste oil, to generate electricity. http://www.vegawatt.com/
These are probably the most environmentally sound options, as they require no hauling of the waste or hauling of the fuel that the waste replaces.
A friend of mine's husband
A friend of mine's husband engineered the Vegawatt! It's a great idea.
They thought
they were slick!
Yes, they went down a slippery slope
But ultimately, they got burned - after the feds smoked them out.
Lotta money
in hot oil!
Long New Yorker article on used cooking oil
Describes in some detail how it used to be first come first serve in siphoning used cooking oil. Then Dar Pro came about and boluxed the whole business.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/18/hot-grease
https://www.youtube.com/watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9_jIa2WADc
That's my retirement grease!
Once again, life imitates Simpsons.
You
beat me to it.
"Here comes the big grease ball!"
"Hey! Why you a-gotta talk about a-Luigi like-a that!?"
Environmentalists and government laws promote crime
Do-gooders actively made a crime opportunity! Sort of how prohibition fostered organized crime, drug prohibition results in shootings and other crimes etc. Here, forcing the incorporation of biodiesel into fuel and giving refineries credits for using it has made used oil so much more valuable and thus attractive to thieves.
Right
And the government forced the oil companies to charge up to $4 a gallon for heating oil at mid winter, creating a solid market for waste oil that predates the biofuel mandates.
Uh huh.
Oh my lord...
Are you really like this in real life? If so, you are a sad person.
The assertions are emphatic
..in some proportion to their preposterousness as if he figures that will work.
New meds?
It's Mark
We've just learned when to ignore him
What is the sound of one axe grinding?
"actively"? As in, the "do-gooders" all sat down and said, "Hey, this waste oil that now costs money to dump? Let's create a use for it, not because it'll get rid of waste, not because it'll replace fossil fuels, not because it's a way for those who produce the waste to get some use or money out of it...but purely and entirely BECAUSE IT'LL CREATE CRIME!!!" Because, you know, that's what they would have had to have done to "actively [make] a crime opportunity". Is that what you're claiming?
Unforeseen consequences
Unforeseen and unintended consequences are the simpler explanation than conspiracy. Alcohol prohibition was one well-intentioned act with a poor outcome. Countless environmental examples exist, from invasive species to pesticides, over use of good things like antibiotics producing resistance, to declaring a species protected causing over population. The protection of seals, for example, has produced great white shark attacks off our coast in growing numbers.
The point is that many people and laws are too simplistic to consider all the ramifications of an action having widespread affect on people.
Have you ever considered the
Have you ever considered the unforseen consequences of being a loudmouth know-it-all who's wrong about everything?
So going by your...erm...logic
What's your thought on car theft? Approximately a million cars stolen every year in the US, so clearly if there were no cars then OMG THE CRIME RATE WOULD PLUMMET!! Cars actually BREED CRIME!!
Ninny
So let's see if I've got this fuzzy-headed logic of yours sorted out. Actions have consequences, some of them unintended, and some of those unintended consequences can be bad. So, because these negative consequences can and sometimes do happen, we should refrain from actions that have obvious benefits, like...oh, I don't know, recycling cooking oil?
So let's give the creators of the biofuels industry perfect 20/20 foresight, which you yourself admit they could not possibly have had. They foresee that waste oil, formerly less than valueless, now has value, and like anything with value, might be stolen. What do you think, then, is the wise course of action? This is the central point that you keep trying to dodge around, because at the heart of it, you're making a ridiculous blowhard criticism of those who created something useful, on the basis that it has an extremely tenuous connection to a negative side effect that is minor in comparison with the benefit. Honestly, you sound like someone who would oppose swimming pools because people get wrinkly fingers when they go swimming.
"The point is that many people and laws are too simplistic to consider all the ramifications of an action having widespread affect on people."
You might work on your diction before you try using such big words.
Why the law is the problem
When used cooking oil has little value or costs money to dispose, its kept unsecured by countless restaurants. If market forces were allowed to gradually give oil value, storage security will have time to be upgraded across hundreds of thousands of locations. With the new laws, the change is sudden, creating the problems.
A similar thing happened with laws requiring ethanol in fuels. First, it rots fuel systems and gaskets in older cars causing fires. Second, it raised the price of corn, hurting export markets like Haiti where people can't afford the price jump. Oh, and MPG drops too as energy density is now lower, thus also increasing spending on supplying more fuel to gas stations due to more gallons of gas consumed for the same distances traveled. Locally, residents protest the rail car transportation of flammable ethanol mandated in gasoline.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Mega Facepalm
Seriously, the re-use of cooking oil is a benefit to everybody. The restaurants capture revenue that was previously lost, a new industry (read that as jobs) developed, fuel oil supply increased (read that one as lower prices for consumers). Economic activity will of course attract a criminal element. So boiled down, your argument, Markk02474, is that we should shut down the economy to ensure there is nothing of value for thieves.
No, just not have the new laws
Capitalism will take care of reaping the benefits at a more sustainable pace than the shock of new laws.
Um...
Name the law that forced anyone to convert used cooking oil to biofuel.
As far as I know, it doesn't exist.
It's exactly what you are talking about: market forces at work, making a toss-off byproduct into a useful source of energy because some folks wanted to turn their diesel cars into cleaner-burning machines for the planet. It was expensive ten years ago, and has gotten cheaper as *gasp* the market has responded and more conversion centers have opened up to meet the *shock* market demand for the product.
Now go sit down and shut up, you troll.
When are trucks going to
When are trucks going to start smelling like bacon or french fries instead of diesel fumes?
Oh, you laugh now ...
There are kits that let you run your diesel car on this stuff and, yes, your car starts to smell like French fries.
It goes in a reserve tank.
You have to start the engine with petro in it and then switch to the fryolater oil once it's running..
At least that's how it worked initially when I checked it in 2006.
These conversion kits seemed
These conversion kits seemed like an amazing idea and great way to run your car on cheap/free waste oil about 5 years ago, but a story like this should show that waste oil is actually a big business now, with most restaurants having specific deals with big processing plants such that the good old "go up to a restaurant and ask for their old oil - they are just throwing it away!" is hardly true any more! I have two friends who paid a lot to install these things and they just run their cars on regular diesel now, because no one will give them waste oil any more.
If they can buy it for $1.50
If they can buy it for $1.50 a gallon, it seems like it would still be worth it.
If is the operative word here
If is the operative word here - most restaurants won't even sell it because big rendering companies have dumpsters set up with locks and all that they come and empty once a month or so. The companies buy it for $1.50 a gallon (as opposed to when restaurants used to have to pay someone to come take it away), and have whole contracts set up and all. They market very heavily to restaurants, and as a result most owners aren't going to allow random folks to come siphon it off. Buying it from a rendering company costs as much as biodiesel does, which is more expensive than dead dino diesel.
Another dream shattered.
Another dream shattered.
Thanks MRM!
I don't drive and am out of that loop but I was wondering how that turned out.
While the usual right wing douche wagons were deriding the whole thing, the very free enterprise moguls they so love to fluff were scrambling to lock down and monopolize this newly lucrative fryolater oil patch.
It is so typical of the right. Someone forgets to get the memo to the bellowing foot soldiers in the scramble to grab.
No need to be paranoid
Forget all the "monopolize" conspiracy theories and do the math. Having a "french fry car" worked fine as long as you were the only person in town doing it. But look around you at the number of restaurants per square foot, and the number of cars per square foot, and ask yourself how far that waste oil can go. If even one in ten cars tried to run on spent cooking oil, it would be too many.
More like ordinary capitalism.
Conspiracy takes too much work and is unreliable.
To rejigger Napoleon: "Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained by garden variety avarice."
I did suspect it wouldn't be replacing the Ghawar Field anytime soon and it looks like the processing issues would be more work than most would want to undertake. But it is still pretty funny to see how fast it became valuable once a market for it emerged.
It's like the bottle bill. If some formerly worthless thing gets monetized, a market structure finds it fairly quickly.
The general spike in non ferrous metals prices has even even led to some pretty ridiculous and dangerous copper and brass scrounging problems from gutting vacant houses to stealing historic plaques to frying oneself trying to steal copper from power stations.
And if you follow the thread more carefully you'll note one 'downtown-anon' already posted a very good New Yorker piece about that scramble up above.
What does any of that have to
What does any of that have to do with my comment?
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