Intercon owner sentenced for mishandling of electronic scrap

Brian Brundage, the owner of Intercon Solutions Inc., Chicago Heights, Illinois, and EnviroGreen Processing LLC, based in Gary, Indiana, has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for illegally landfilling electronic scrap as part of a plan to resell the materials and avoid paying income taxes. In addition to the sentence, Brundage has been ordered to pay more than $1.2 million in restitution to his victims, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

Brundage pleaded guilty last year to one count of wire fraud and one count of tax evasion.

The companies owned by Brundage claimed to be recycling obsolete electronics in an environmentally sound manner on behalf of corporate and governmental clients. However, according to the DOJ, from 2005 to 2016, Brundage caused thousands of tons of e-scrap and other potentially hazardous materials to be landfilled, stockpiled or resold at a profit to companies who shipped the materials overseas. Through the move, Brundage evaded more than $740,000 in federal taxes by concealing the income that he falsely recorded as Intercon business expenses, the DOJ reports.

Brundage admitted in a plea agreement last September that he caused employees of Intercon and EnviroGreen to sell some of the obsolete materials to vendors who Brundage knew would ship it overseas. Some of the materials contained cathode ray tubes (CRT), which contain considerable amounts of lead. Brundage also admitted causing multiple tons of CRT glass and other potentially hazardous materials to be processed in environmentally unsafe ways or landfilled.

Electronics recycling company owner Robin Ingenthron of Good Point Recycling, Middlebury, Vermont, says the Brundage verdict was pertinent to fraud and tax evasion, but did not invalidate the notion that working and refurbishable equipment can be shipped to responsible overseas buyers.

He says in the Intercon case, as with earlier ones involving Washington-based Total Reclaim and Michigan-based Discount Computer, “The sentencing has been for fraud, never for dumping.” In the three cases, says Ingengthron, “The export market refused mixed loads or expensive junk CRTs. In each case, it was not proven to be an illegitimate ‘waste’ transaction.”