NJ report: Organized crime getting into recycling
By ANGELA DELLI SANTI, Associated Press
Tuesday, December 6, 2011


Mobsters have a long history of making a killing in the garbage-hauling business, but a New Jersey commission says they have gone green by infiltrating the commercial recycling business.

The New Jersey State Commission of Investigation reported Tuesday that organized crime continues to find and exploit holes in a regulatory system that hasn't been updated in decades. A law adopted in 1983 that was designed to keep criminals out of the solid waste business isn't properly enforced and commercial recyclers remain largely unregulated.

"The integrity of this industry remains in peril," the commission wrote. "The industry today remains open to manipulation and abuse by criminal elements."

Organized crime's ties to garbage hauling reach back at least half a century.

The New Jersey commission first uncovered significant criminal intrusion into solid waste disposal in 1969. The infiltration was most prominent in the 1980s, when organized crime had a stranglehold on the industry, forcing out legitimate operators through extortion. A string of prosecutions and new regulations — licensing requirements and background checks — helped weed out underground operators.

The commission found that the aging regulations, funding and staffing shortages and inter-agency communication problems "aren't working as well as intended to keep criminal elements out of the industry," said commission spokesman Lee Seglem.

The commission said it was particularly bothered by evidence of organized crime's infiltration into commercial recycling, which has become lucrative in the 25 years since New Jersey adopted a mandatory garbage separation and recycling law.

New Jersey requires background checks for "key employees" involved in solid waste hauling. New York's tougher licensing laws — it requires checks for consultants and sales associates in solid waste and for recyclers — encourage organized crime to set up shop across the Hudson River in New Jersey, investigators say.

One example cited in the report is Joseph Lemmo Jr., whom the commission called a "poster boy" for gaps in the state's solid waste licensing law.

Despite multiple criminal convictions and ties to the Genovese crime family, Lemmo made more than $1 million a year operating within plain sight for more than a decade, the commission said. Though his criminal convictions should have barred him from the industry in New Jersey, he found a back way in through a truck-rental company that supplied trailers to a waste-hauling company owned by his cousin, the report said.

Lemmo did not reply to a notice from the commission inviting a written response. A phone message left with his former company, which he sold two years ago, was not immediately returned.

People also have gotten around the law through front companies or by having relatives with clean criminal records obtain licenses, the commission found.

The commission recommended several changes, including stronger laws and more money and manpower for enforcement. It said the state's solid waste and disposal licensing requirements should be extended to recycling. Recognizing that government budgets are being stretched thin by the recession, the commission also suggested charging licensing fees to haulers to generate money for enforcement.

Additional concerns were raised concern about potential environmental consequences of a waste-hauling industry running amok, including midnight dumping, the mixing of hazardous and solid-waste material and the resale of junked computer components.

The governor's office said it was reviewing the report. Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie, said the governor is confident in his administration's ability to manage available resources to properly regulate the solid waste and recycling industries and enforce criminal laws.

The three-member commission said similar recommendations have been made before.

"In 1969, the commission revealed that organized crime rooted in New York was spreading into commercial garbage collection in New Jersey and warned that the industry was at dire risk of becoming rife with bribery, extortion, price-fixing, collusive bidding and other forms of corruption," the commissioners wrote.

It issued additional warnings after the 1983 legislation required garbage haulers to be licensed, saying the new law was being improperly enforced.

"That the commission today, more than 20 years later, must repeat some of the same general findings and recommendations is a testament to the price of warnings ignored, opportunities lost and legislative intent undermined," the most recent report states. "The ability of mob-affiliated entrepreneurs to continue profiting from the system even after they have been unmasked reflects a fundamental flaw."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/12/06/national/a140841S00.DTL

Press Release -

http://www.state.nj.us/sci/pdf/Solid%20Waste%20Release.pdf

Report -

http://www.state.nj.us/sci/pdf/Solid%20Waste%20Report.pdf

Cops: Mob Boss Fake Job Out Of Sopranos
Tuesday, 06 Dec 2011


New revelations about jailed Philadelphia mob boss Joe Ligambi are right out of "The Sopranos," as Ligambi is accused of getting huge bucks for a phantom job.

In a report about "garbage gangsters," New Jersey's Commission Of Investigation has raised disturbing allegations about how Ligambi made money as a "no show" employee for a South Jersey trash company.

In the fictional "Sopranos," Tony Soprano was employed as a "waste management consultant."

The report says Ligambi was paid over $50,000 a year but didn't perform any duties for the company while it hauled trash at the Philadelphia Produce Market.

Mob boss Ligambi wasn't shy about wearing his top job disposal tee shirt around his South Philly neighborhood. After all the feds and now the new jersey state commission of investigation confirm that Ligambi got paid rather handsomely for a job they say required him to do absolutely nothing.

"The job certainly was not a legitimate job, i think you used the term a mob connected company and a no show job, that's exactly right," says David Troyer, an Assistant U.S. attorney.

"The government is making an awful lot of allegations, they've yet to prove a blessed thing in court," says Edwin Jacobs, Ligambi's attorney.

The SCI says Ligambi was on the top job payroll from 2003 to 2011 when he was arrested along with a dozen other wiseguys and associates in a major federal racketeering case

The SCI says he was paid a thousand dollars a week for over eight years, almost $500,000, but "performed no official work for the company.

Top job hauled trash for years at the old Philadelphia Produce Market in south Philly. The SCI says top job got the contract there in 2001 and renewed it in 2006 for $850,000 a year.

The SCI report says Ligambi also received health benefits for he and his family until last April. Top job continues to haul trash at the new regional produce market on Essington Avenue, which was built with $152 million dollars of taxpayer money.

Greg Goffredo, the son of the former owner of top job, told Fox 29 he left Joe Ligambi on the payroll because it was one of his father's last dying requests. He no longer has any involvement with the company.

Goffredo disputed the SCI report that he has any controlling interest in top job or that the company has any organized crime connections.

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/cops%3A-mob-boss-fake-job-out-of-sopranos-120611

Crime Keeps Grip on Garbage
By HEATHER HADDON, Wall Street Journal
December 7, 2011


Organized crime remains deeply entrenched in New Jersey's sprawling garbage-hauling industry, despite efforts spanning four decades to root it out, a state Commission of Investigation report found Tuesday.

The multiyear investigation—which will do nothing to dispel the image of New Jersey as the Sopranos state—found that 30 individuals who had been thrown out of the heavily regulated New York garbage industry are now working with waste disposal in New Jersey.

Their employment was often hidden through "consulting" arrangements or by having the individuals act as low-tier employees such as salesmen, the report found. Investigators found instances of rigged contracts funneled to criminals through family members, and people with convictions and mob connections doing business openly—despite a state law requiring background checks and financial disclosures.

The commission concluded that a 1983 state law meant to boot criminals from the industry's 1,300 waste-management companies hadn't fully cleaned up the sector.

That law "remains flawed in critical ways that all but invite manipulation and exploitation by criminal and other unscrupulous elements," the report stated.

Corruption in the New Jersey garbage industry—fictionalized in the HBO series "The Sopranos"—has persisted in the state since the 1960s, when mob associates moved across the Hudson from New York.

The New Jersey Commission of Investigation was founded in 1968 to investigate organized crime and corruption in waste disposal and other industries. A commission report about garbage-industry corruption led to the 1983 laws that subject key employees to background checks and financial disclosures.

But Tuesday's report said paltry funding and poor record management had weakened that law and an industry regulatory unit run jointly by the state Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Law and Public Safety.

The unit's budget fell to $1.7 million in fiscal year 2010 from $2.7 million in 2001. It has lost many of its full-time investigators since Sept. 11, 2001, and doesn't oversee recycling and construction disposal—two industries that don't require criminal background checks.

It currently takes an average of more than three years to disbar someone found to be acting unethically in the garbage sector, the report found.

"The state needs to take a fresh look at this law," said commission spokesman Lee Seglem.

Leland Moore, a spokesman for the Office of the Attorney General, which includes the Department of Law and Public Safety, defended the unit, named the A-901 program after the original legislation's bill number.

He said more than 90 companies and individuals had been removed from the solid-waste industry since 2005. He said the 30 individuals identified by the commission fall outside of the unit's powers, and added that state regulators aren't aware of any "systemic" infiltration of criminal elements in the sector.

"The Attorney General's Office and DEP continue to conduct thorough background checks and investigations of individuals involved in the direct management of the solid waste business," he said in a statement.

The commission doesn't have prosecutorial powers but refers its findings to law enforcement.

The commission found that the state is unable to keep out people accused of having organized-crime connections. Among them is Frank Fiumefreddo Sr., who was kicked out of the New York garbage industry after pleading guilty in the 1990s to corruption charges handed down in Manhattan related to preventing other firms from encroaching on his company's territory, the report said. Mr. Fiumefreddo was once business partners with a member of the Gambino crime family, the report said.

Mr. Fiumefreddo is a "consultant" to his son's company, Central Jersey Waste & Recycling, the report said. Although he denied being a key employee subject to a background check, Mr. Fiumefreddo called himself the "president/owner" of Central Jersey in a loan application for his $4.1 million home in Spring Lake, N.J., the commission said.

Mr. Fiumefreddo hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing in New Jersey.

In written responses to the report, lawyers for Mr. Fiumefreddo and his son denied that there was any "incomplete and misleading" information regarding the company's ownership. They also denied that the senior Fiumefreddo was a "member or associate of organized crime."

Experts on the state's garbage industry said it has long attracted low-skilled workers who use extortion and other illegal means to secure contracts.

Even when criminals are rooted out, they tend to come through the backdoor as consultants, said David Shapiro, a former assistant prosecutor in New Jersey who conducted mob investigations in the waste-management industry.

"You have these entrenched interests that dominate the industry, and it is not easy to get rid of them," said Mr. Shapiro, a professor in the Department of Economics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The commission pointed to New York, where a dedicated unit had policed the private solid waste disposal industry since 1996. New York's success has hurt New Jersey, as rogue actors no longer able to practice in the city moved west of the Hudson, the commission found.

Assemblyman Gordon Johnson said Tuesday he intended to introduce legislation incorporating some of the report's recommendations.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082773986864002.html

Ivy, sounds like the Genovese have a large presence in this industry (as expected), In NJ though in the current day, how big a hand do you think the Decalvacante family have in things?

I didnt expect this on such a scale, interesting to see they still have a grip on these stuff.

The DeCavalcantes were always big into construction. So related things like demolition, asbestos removal, carting, and recycling isn't too much of a stretch.

Widespread industry regulations in New York removed most of the mob's presence in the commercial garbage business. But there weren't the same level of reforms in related business like demolition, recycling, etc. in either New York or New Jersey. So the mob was able to maintain a presence there, as the report shows, in any number of ways.

The mob going green? gotta love it.

Exactly.

Although there's not nearly as much money involved in recycling as there is in garbage hauling, there's still plenty of money to be made, and the mob wasn't going to miss out on the opportunity to make some.

But let's be honest; it's only a matter of time before the government regulates that, too.

It is , but they will NEVER regulate them in all their jobs,its impossible.mafia always find a way to make a lot of money.

Of course you can't catch every criminal. It's just not possible.

You can't kill every cockroach, either. But that doesn't mean you stop trying.

Angelo Bruno was paid 50,000 a year for his no show job as a salesman for Long John's vending co. So uncle joe makin 50 thousand now for his job isn't much in these times.

I was about to mention that in agreement, I mean if the boss's no show job is a $50,000 year gig, that's not a good sign. Maybe for a soldier but certainly not for the boss. That and it seemed the only connections was for a no show for the boss, not for other members of the family.

A lot of them have "jobs" in real estate and within local construction companies. I know Anthony Nicodemo "works" real estate and I'm fairly certain the Lancellotti's do as well (I know Albert does for a fact). Marty Angelina has a pretty nice gig in construction.

Ligambi is not a flashy person and he's old, $50,000 should be enough on the surface.

First, I'd love to get 50K a year for doing nothing. Second, that was obviously only one of Ligambi's sources of income.

Though wouldn't something that pays more than 50,000 be a lot easier to cover expenses, at least on tax paper? I don't know the size of this guy's house or the car that he drives but I'd imagine it'd be worth the peace of mind.

Well, as the recent indictment alleged, besides the job with the carting company, he also had interests in real estate and a towing company.

Seriously how do you scoff at free money? Even if it was 5,000, that's pure profit that never required an iota of your time.