AAD disposal co-owner gets jail
time
Colorado’s Jefferson County District
Court Judge Brian Boatright recently sentenced Hormoz Pourat to
pay a $100,000 fine and spend 17 years in prison for his role
in a hazardous waste scam that included the illegal dumping and
storage of perchloroethylene over a five-year period.
The prison time was the longest ever
levied for an environmental crime in the U.S., matching an
Idaho case about two years ago that involved a man sending an
employee without proper safety gear to clean a 25,000-gallon
storage tank that contained cyanide. The 20-year old worker
suffered permanent brain damage as a result.
In a press release, Colorado Attorney
General Ken Salazar noted that the case against Pourat marked
the first time in the state that an environmental crime was
prosecuted under organized crime, or racketeering, statutes.
“I am very pleased with the sentence
Judge Boatright imposed on Hormoz Pourat,” he said.
“This is a landmark environmental crime case in which the
defendants operated a criminal enterprise in flaunting our
environmental laws, perpetrating a scam on victim businesses,
and despoiling our environment.”
Hormoz co-owned AAD Distribution and Dry
Cleaning Service, Inc. and AAD Disposal, Inc., with his
brother, Harry. Both siblings, along with four company
employees, were prosecuted March, 2001, facing 34 criminal
counts in all, including charges of racketeering, forgery,
attempting to influence a public servant and violations of the
Colorado Hazardous Waste Act.
The Pourats face additional charges in
California.
The four company employees —
including Behzad Kahoolyzadeh and managers Robert Hearsch,
Aaron Rios and Patricia Hajduch — have been convicted
under Colorado law, receiving various probation and community
service sentences along with fines totaling up to over $80,000.
Harry Pourat is suspected of fleeing the
country, possibly to his native Iran, in order to evade
capture.
Hormoz Pourat wasn’t so lucky. In
addition to facing a long prison term and a $100,000 fine for
pleading guilty to one count of racketeering, a class 2 felony,
he will have to pay some of the costs of cleaning up the waste.
The exact amount will be determined within
90 days by Judge Boatright, who based his sentencing on the
fact that Hormoz Pourat held over 14 years of senior level
responsibility at AAD, including the duration of the
company’s illegal waste management activities.
The scam perpetrated by AAD was a long and
complicated one that entailed the illegal storing, shipping and
dumping of perc for drycleaners in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana,
Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Kansas, Missouri and Texas. Overall,
Colorado prosecutors estimated that about 300 cleaners were
cheated out of a total of approximately $80,000 a month between
February of 1996 and March of 2001.
Instead of properly treating and disposing
of the waste — which included liquid perc waste, as well
as filters and other solid material contaminated with perc
— the company purportedly shipped it to its California
recycling facility. Then, the untreated waste would often be
relabeled and shipped back to Colorado where it was stored in
55-gallon drums at the company’s facility in Lakewood. In
all, hundreds of drums were stored there; the landowner who
leased the building to AAD has been held responsible for
$80,000 in clean-up costs to the site.
In other instances, the contaminated waste
was repackaged in cardboard cubic yard boxes and sent off to
landfills, primarily in Nevada and Idaho. Prosecutors believe
that those landfills contain thousands of perc-filled boxes,
possibly enough to leak through the synthetic liners of
protection and into groundwater supplies.
The extent of the damage to the landfills
remains to be seen, but they will be monitored closely in the
future. If significant environmental damage does ensue at
either landfill, drycleaners who were customers of AAD during
their illegal activities may be held economically accountable
for site remediation fees.
According to Colorado Assistant Attorney
General Brian Whitney, it’s too early to tell if
drycleaners will bear some of the financial responsibilities.
“It’s not something that is known at this
time,” he said. “I think, at this juncture,
it’s unlikely that will happen.”
In order to perpetuate the scam for so
long, AAD had to break several environmental regulations,
including the falsifying of transportation documentation, as
well as mislabeling waste in order to dump it in the landfills
rather than properly incinerating and distilling it.
By avoiding the cost of incineration and
distillation, it is believed that AAD saved several hundreds of
dollars per drum, enabling the company to bid less than other
competitors and take the drycleaning disposal market by storm.
Authorities added that it was impossible
to determine how much AAD earned altogether because they
falsified shipping and receiving documents and funneled the
money they saved — possibly several million dollars
— into other real estate holdings and business ventures.
AAD Disposal had been investigated for 15
months before indictments were served by a statewide grand jury
last year. The Colorado Attorney General’s office was
assisted by the Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the
California EPA, as well as Jefferson County law enforcement.
For more information, visit the web site
for the Colorado Attorney General’s office at www.ago.state.co.us.
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