Available now on Amazon

Available now on Amazon
Amazon Best Seller

Former Bergen County trash-hauling baron gets 1-year term in scheme



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.