Indiana man pleads guilty in e-waste recycling fraud scheme
The owner of an electronics recycling company, which operated in the south suburbs, has pleaded guilty to a scheme in which thousands of tons of ewaste were buried in landfills or resold at a profit to companies that shipped the materials overseas, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago said Thursday.
Brian Brundage, 46, of Dyer, Ind., pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of wire fraud and one count of tax evasion, the office said in a news release.
At one time he owned Intercon Solutions in Chicago Heights then later EnviroGreen Processing in Gary, both of which purported to recycle e-waste for corporate and government clients, according to the release. But from 2005 to 2016, Brundage had the materials stockpiled outside of Intercon’s plant, then later had the e-waste landfilled or sold overseas, theU.S. attorney said.
He issued false certificates to customers indicating the e-waste had been
properly recycled, according to the plea agreement.
Also, Brundage used sales proceeds from the business to pay expenses such as wages for his family’s nanny and housekeeper, to pay credit card bills, payments on a per-
sonal loan and payments to a northwest Indiana casino, according to the plea agreement.
Those charges were listed on Intercon’s books as business expenses, and deducted as business expenses on Intercon’s corporate tax returns, according to the plea.
In the agreement, Brundage admits to a restitution amount of about $1.3 million, with more than $740,000 owed to the Internal Revenue Service.
The one count of wire fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and the single count of tax evasion is punishable byup to five years in prison, the U. S. attorney said. Brundage is scheduled to be sentenced next Feb. 27 in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
Brundage had been arrested and charged in December 2016 with five counts of income tax evasion, four counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud.
Brundage and Intercon were profiled by the Chicago Tribune in 2007, noting the supposed stringent standards the company adhered to in recycling electronicwaste.
“We put old products on a disassembly line,” Brundage said in the story. “We break each item down to raw materials and send them off to be smelted and reused.”
“Nothing that leaves here goes to a landfill,” Brundage said.
But according to the plea agreement, Brundage had thousands of cathode ray tubes and televisions stockpiled in a yard next to Intercon’s plant, and directed employees to demolish the materials with heavy equipment, with the waste then being hauled to a landfill.