Book Details NYC Cartel

For several decades, solid waste and scrap paper generators in New York City were at the mercy of a cartel that colluded to rig bids and fix prices for trash pick-up and paper recycling services.

The scheme was finally brought to an end in the mid-1990s after an undercover operation that is detailed in a new book entitled Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire. (G.P. Putnams Son’s, New York, Copyright 2002.)

The book is co-authored by New York police detective Rick Cowan, who spent several years pretending to be Dan Benedetto, an executive with Brooklyn’s Chambers Paper Fibres Corp., an honest paper recycling firm that worked its way into the corrupt cartel in order to expose it.

The book details the extent to which office buildings, retailers, printing plants and other scrap paper generators in New York were gouged by the cartel, which was ultimately controlled by a handful of organized crime rings.

The organized crime rings divided New York’s five boroughs into spheres of influence, and held together an anti-competitive price-fixing scheme from at least the early 1950s until 1995. The rings operated under the guise of trade associations with such names as the Greater New York Waste Paper Association, the Association of Trade Waste Removers of Greater New York, the Kings County Trade Waste Association and the Queens County Trade Waste Association.

The undercover operation produced large volumes of audio recordings that led to the cartel’s downfall in 1995. Subsequently, with the introduction of honest competition, New York businesses have seen their solid waste bills drop by as much as 90 percent and have seen competitive bidding for their scrap paper.

The sweeping indictment resulting from Operation Wasteland identified 17 individuals, 23 companies and the four trade associations as co-conspirators in the scheme that extorted large amounts of money and relied on intimidation and violence to perpetuate itself.

The convictions resulting from the operation have largely been credited with gutting a long-standing source of organized crime revenue. “We’d cost the Mob its money-making machine, [taking] away the livelihoods of organized crime figures and Mobbed-up companies,” writes Cowan. “These were multi-million-dollar-per-year dynasties that these guys had always expected their grandsons and great-grandsons would inherit. On June 22, 1995—poof—all gone,” he adds.

The detective credits the real source of courage in the investigation as belonging to Sal Benedetto and others with Chambers Paper Fibres and related Benedetto companies. “Sal Benedetto knows he’s got a target on his head for the rest of his life,” writes Cowan.

To hear an interview with the author that was played on National Public Radio click here 

NPR Interview