May 23--STAMFORD -- The private trash hauling company under police investigation since April for manipulating the weight of its trucks at the city scale house has allegedly defrauded Stamford out of more than $200,000 in unpaid tipping fees over the past five years, police and city officials said Tuesday.
Lt. Diedrich Hohn, the Stamford Police Department supervisor of criminal investigations, said investigators looking into Margarum Refuse, a private garbage hauler, are close to forwarding their findings to the state attorney's office at state Superior Court in Stamford, where prosecutors will determine how many arrests will be made.
Hohn said investigators determined Margarum Refuse allegedly cheated the city out of a substantial amount of money in tipping fees, based on a criminal probe that examined scale house records from the past five years.
"We're confident we have enough for a warrant," Hohn said.
Police began investigating Margarum Refuse in April, a month after city officials received an anonymous tip and conducted a spot audit at the municipal scale house on Harborview Avenue. The audit found a discrepancy in the weight of a truck owned by Margarum when compared to past records; police began looking into whether the garbage company falsified the weight of a truck to cheat the city out of tipping fees.
Private garbage haulers pay $88 per ton to dump trash at the scale house. If a truck is registered as weighing more than it actually does, the private hauler pays lower tipping fees to dump trash at the scale house.
Hohn would not disclose more details about the investigation because arrests have not yet been made.
According to minutes from the May 14 Police Commission meeting, authorities told commissioners that the total amount involved in the investigation was in the vicinity of $300,000. On Tuesday, Public Safety Director Ted Jankowski put the amount between $200,000 and $300,000.
"It's an ongoing investigation," Jankowski said. "Any time there is any type of impropriety, the city doesn't condone that in any shape or form."
Reached by phone Tuesday, Wayne Margarum, owner of the family refuse company, said he didn't know about the investigation or the allegations of fraud.
"I won't to talk to anyone unless I have a lawyer," Margarum said.
In addition to the police investigation, the Board of Finance last week authorized spending $25,000 for an outside audit of scale house operations. Gerald Bosak, a Finance Board member, pushed for the audit in April.
On Tuesday, he said the board will discuss selecting an outside auditor at a special meeting next week. Bosak said the board will use the audit to determine whether the city had been cheated out of more money than the amount police suspect.
"If that is in fact true, the Board of Finance is not going to tolerate any of this behavior and is going to root out these matters," Bosak said.
Chairman Tim Abbazia said the Finance Board will build on the police findings and avoid redundancy in its audit of the scale house. He said the board should assess whether city departments adhere to existing controls against fraud and whether more are needed to prevent such incidents to occur, such as the 2010 arrest of city human resources specialist Fred Manfredonia for embezzling more than $350,000 in city funds.
"We will expand our audit and use the information that's available, but I don't want to jump to any conclusions," Abbazia said.
Investigators seized two trucks from Margarum Refuse during the criminal probe and took them out of service because they were unsafe. One truck had a weight discrepancy of more than 3,000 pounds, and a second had a discrepancy of less than 3,000 pounds when compared to the weights registered with the city last year, police have said.
The city's scale house weighs trucks only once a year to reduce waiting times, operations officials have said. Other municipalities weigh trucks as they come and go, allowing for more accurate garbage weights for each load. To determine the weight of garbage during each load, which gives city officials the amount to charge each trash hauler, scale house workers subtract the weight of an empty truck against the weight of the trash.
Seven private vendors, including Margarum Refuse, use the Harborview Avenue scale house to dump garbage, city officials have said.
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Copyright 2012 - The Stamford Advocate, Conn.
