BY KAREN SUDOL
A former Bergen County trash collection baron who was ultimately
banned from the industry will serve a prison sentence of a year and a day for
his role in a scheme to exert control over the commercial waste-hauling
industry in New York and New Jersey, authorities announced.
U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel, sitting in federal court in
Manhattan, also ordered Carmine Franco, 78, of Ramsey to forfeit $2.5 million
to the United States and pay more than $10,000 in fines and restitution.
Franco, a reported associate of the Genovese crime family who is
also known as "Papa Smurf" and "Uncle Sonny," is among 32
defendants linked to three organized crime families — Genovese, Gambino and
Lucchese — and charged in connection with the scheme, prosecutors said in a
news release, citing the indictment, other documents and court statements. So
far, 21 have been convicted of their roles in the plan.
Franco pleaded guilty in November to three separate conspiracy
counts.
As part of his plea, Franco acknowledged his membership in a
racketeering enterprise that exercised illegal control over waste haulers in
Bergen and Passaic counties as well as Westchester, Rockland and Nassau
counties in New York, authorities said. He also admitted that he committed mail
and wire fraud by overbilling customers of a waste transfer station that he
controlled in West Nyack, N.Y., and that he and his associates transported
large volumes of stolen cardboard across state lines, officials said.
Franco has owned or controlled waste disposal businesses for more
than 30 years. Because of convictions in the early 1980s and late 1990s and
known associations with organized crime, he was banned from the waste-hauling
industry in New Jersey and was not licensed to operate such businesses in many
New York jurisdictions, the indictment said.
But, it charged, Franco still secretly took control of and
operated trash-hauling companies, extorting their owners and orchestrating
thefts of their property. During the four-year investigation, authorities said,
they were aided by a cooperating witness whose hauling company was under
Franco's control and later was taken over by other mob factions.