Over the last several months, 22,741 New Yorkers contacted the city’s Department of Sanitation and arranged for the pickup of refrigerators, air-conditioners and freezers. In more than 11,000 instances, the machines vanished before sanitation workers arrived in their white trucks to pick them up...
Deepening the mystery, these were neither the latest Sub Zero behemoths, sleek Bosch nor stylish retro Smeg refrigerators. They were garbage, quite literally — discarded appliances left at the curb for pickup by the Sanitation Department...
Behind those losses, some in the industry — by some accounts an $85 billion annual business in 2008 — see the hand of organized crime, although no one can point to hard evidence. New York’s enduring and resourceful mob families have long played a role in both the recycling and scrap industries and have a knack for turning up where the money is.
The rest of the story is at the
New York Times. I wish the malefactors would come to our neighborhood; we have to pay to get large broken appliances hauled away.
I wonder if they are after the Freon. I understand that it is very expensive nowadays.
ReplyDeleteModern meth manufacturing uses a lot of freon, and if NY tracks or limits the sale of freon, using the freon out of junk refrigerators would be an easy way to avoid unwanted attention from the government.
ReplyDelete