Recyclers push for tougher laws against slick criminals seeking piece of biofuel demand

5/25/2014
BY BARRY SHLACHTER
FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Clay Carrillo-Miranda pumps used grease into a tanker in Fort Worth. To thwart thieves, he stakes out the restaurants that contract with his employer, Haltom City’s Best Grease Service, because, he says, thieves can strike fast.
Clay Carrillo-Miranda pumps used grease into a tanker in Fort Worth. To thwart thieves, he stakes out the restaurants that contract with his employer, Haltom City’s Best Grease Service, because, he says, thieves can strike fast.

FORT WORTH — In darkened alleyways, a slimy cat-and-mouse game is playing out across America.

Men in trucks are fighting over a dirty and sometimes foul-smelling substance that restaurants once paid to get hauled off. Now it can be worth thousands per truckload. Liquid gold, some in the trade call it.

It’s grease — used kitchen cooking oil from deep fryers at KFC and the seasoned saucepans of the fanciest French restaurant.

The thefts are fueled in part by growing demand for biodiesel. Before, the grease was mainly used for lubricants, soap, and animal feed.

The increasingly consolidated grease-retrieval industry, ranging from mom-and-pop operations to publicly traded giants, is marked by cutthroat competition to claim restaurant accounts. And all of them have to grab their grease before a ragtag swarm of thieves gets there first.

“This one is pretty clean,” Clay Carrillo-Miranda of Haltom City’s Best Grease Service said on his second-to-last stop of the day when he pumped out thick gunk from a container behind the J&J Oyster Bar in Fort Worth. “Some stink so bad you want to throw up. When it’s 105 degrees, this job isn’t a lot of fun, so that’s when I go out at night.”

And after sundown is when the thieves usually strike — and fast.

“You can pull in and drive off in five minutes. It can be $500 a night, $2,500 a week,” said Mr. Carrillo-Miranda, 37. “Even if your truck gets impounded, that’s $500. You’re still ahead $2,000 for the week.”

A 15-year veteran of the oil-recycling business, he spends several nights a month on stakeouts behind restaurants that contract with his employer. He has lost count of the locks he’s replaced because of thieves with bolt cutters. His boss, Brian Smith, says a Burleson, Texas, man was caught using the firefighters’ Jaws of Life to break into tanks.

Licensed collectors have used surveillance cameras, extra-heavy metal lids, and off-duty cops to protect their routes while lobbying for better local enforcement and stronger state laws.

In a sign of how aggressive the grease war has become, a dozen production companies are looking into creating reality TV episodes.

Chris Griffin, deputy general counsel for Darling International and its Griffin Industries unit, a national recycler, conservatively estimates that 20 percent of its used kitchen grease is stolen each year.

Darling partnered with Valero Energy to open the country’s largest biodiesel plant last year in Norco, La., with a daily capacity of 142 million gallons.

When soybean prices spiked because of the drought in 2012, demand for used cooking grease for biofuel production rose, according to a 2013 industry study by IBIS World. The research firm estimated that sales last year reached $1.3 billion, and it predicted annual growth of 1.7 percent through 2018.

The industry successfully has lobbied legislatures in California, Virginia, and North Carolina to pass stronger laws against grease theft. In Virginia, any company that buys more than 55 gallons of grease from an unregistered transporter can be fined $5,000.

And it can become a federal crime. In January, 2013, Missouri grease dealer Jesse Arnold was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison and required to forfeit $207,817 made from buying oil stolen in Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas.

Thievery escalates whenever the commodity price rises, said Jason Satterfield, 35, owner of Black Sheep Grease of Aurora, Texas.

Mr. Satterfield attributes a sizable portion of a $50,000 drop in revenue last year to grease stolen from his tanks behind restaurants with which he has contracts.

“I had to lay off two fantastic guys as a result,” he said, forcing him to co-found a side business manufacturing tanks that are harder to break into.

But Darling discounts the impact of high commodity prices.

“I don’t believe grease theft ebbs and flows with market fluctuations,” said Mr. Griffin, whose grandfather founded Griffin Industries, which was acquired by Darling, its biggest rival, in 2010. “Grease theft is a long-standing industry problem and has been around for as long as the company has been in business [71 years].”

It doesn’t cost much to become a grease thief — about $75 for a “trash” pump and less than $50 for a used tank, said Jerry Duty, a third-generation collector who operates Lil Grease Monsters in Grand Prairie.

All the companies interviewed agree that police and prosecutors in many jurisdictions just don’t see a crime, or one worth pursuing.

To some police departments, grease is garbage, Mr. Carrillo-Miranda said.

Mr. Duty said: “Five years ago, I caught a guy three times stealing in Coppell. A cop tells me, ‘I can’t arrest him. It’s only trash.’ ”

Pretty pricey trash.

“After they started making biodiesel from it, it became a lucrative market,” said Mr. Smith of Best Grease. “From $40 to $50 for a 55-gallon drum of dirty grease, it tripled overnight, hitting a peak of $150, and we’d pay the restaurants half, $75. Years ago, they paid us to take it away.”

Mr. Smith said he now receives about $100 a barrel.

“It’s a lucrative business, but the theft can be outrageous,” Smith said. “At times, we lose $500 to $1,000 a week. Some weeks, we’ve had $3,000 worth of grease stolen. It’s hard to patrol 1,200 customers.”

A 2013 New Yorker article on the break-ins — and the ceaseless hands-on efforts to combat them — prompted 12 TV production companies to express interest in creating reality TV episodes, said Jon Jaworski, a Houston lawyer who has defended numerous grease theft suspects in the last 25 years.

Ten of his clients already have signed contracts to participate.