A commercial trash hauler defrauded Baltimore County of nearly $230,000 in fees over five years, according to a report released Monday by the county’s Office of the Inspector General.
Ruppert’s Sanitation Inc. avoided paying $224,737 in tipping fees between 2018 and August 2023 by mixing together almost 2,300 tons of commercial and residential trash and reporting it as residential waste when dropping it off at the Western Acceptance Facility in Halethorpe. That facility is one of three trash disposal sites in Baltimore County. The other two are the Eastern Sanitary Landfill in White Marshand the Central Acceptance Facility in co*ckeysville.
By reporting all of its trash as residential waste, the Owings Mills-based company was able to avoid paying $100 per ton in tipping fees (charges that are levied to collect garbage at a processing site) for commercial waste disposal to a third-party hauler that contracted with the county to offload trash at the Eastern Sanitary Landfill, according to Inspector General Kelly Madigan. Her office began investigating the company after receiving a complaint in August 2022 from a former employee, according to her 41-page report.
Madigan declined to identify Ruppert’s Sanitation, which she referred to in her report as “the company.” The Baltimore Sun identified the company using a county-provided list of solid waste haulers contracted at the Western Acceptance Facility. The company’s name was confirmed by a former county official who wished not to be named for fear of retaliation by current county officials. A Ruppert’s representative who picked up the phone declined to comment and hung up when contacted for comment Tuesday. Madigan also did not name the third-party hauler Ruppert’s defrauded, nor is that company accused of any wrongdoing.
William Ruppert, Ruppert’s Sanitation’s owner and resident agent, did not respond to two requests for comment Monday.
In her report, Madigan said her office was “not permitted” to interview the company owner, but the company’s counsel was “cooperative throughout the investigation,” complying with subpoenas for records and providing “explanations and clarifications of those records upon request.”
In addition to bilking the hauler out of “lost profits …. the fraud also resulted in a loss to the county in that the comingled commercial and residential trash … essentially caused the county to inadvertently landfill more trash at its Eastern Sanitary Landfill than it needed to,” Madigan’s report said.
The county applied in November for a state permit to build a vertical addition to the Eastern Sanitary Landfill’s height to prolong its lifespan after previous estimates said it would run out of space in 2027.
Madigan’s office traced 2,247 tons of waste via surveillance, records subpoenas and interviews that Ruppert’s should have marked as commercial waste and instead was hauled away free of charge, according to the report. Madigan said Monday the $224,737 figure her office arrived at was a “conservative estimate,” and that the actual amount of tipping fees the county was defrauded of could be higher because the office could not access company records from before 2018.
Ruppert’s Sanitation has donated in the past to Democratic politicians like former County Council members Vicki Almond and Tom Quirk, the late County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, former Maryland Secretary of Agriculture Joe Bartenfelder, and current Councilman David Marks, an Upper Falls Republican, according to campaign finance records.
Madigan’s office referred the case to authorities for potential fraud charges, and to the county, which plans to void the contract, according to County Administrative Officer D’Andrea Walker.
In a response letter, Walker said the county would terminate its contract with Ruppert’s Sanitation “as soon as possible,” and would collect the full $224,737, plus an additional $4,000 in fines for violating the terms of its contract. Madigan also recommended that the Department of Public Works and Transportation require all contracted haulers to outfit their vehicles with GPS devices and cameras, which Walker said the county would consider “the next time hauling contracts are negotiated.”
Walker was the Public Works and Transportation agency director from 2020 until April, when the County Council approved her as county administrative officer. DPW includes the Bureau of Solid Waste Management, which oversees the Western Acceptance Facility.
Walker said the agency failed to notice the fraud because the fraud predated the bureau’s practice of randomly “spot checking” solid waste loads for “suspicious items or contaminated/unacceptable materials.” The bureau began random spot checks last October, according to Walker.
“DPWT will continue to evaluate (solid waste management) policies to ensure against future instances of fraud,” she wrote. “The (bureau) has been very proactive in enforcing policies and procedures related to municipal solid waste collection and will continue to monitor transactions for suspicious activity.”
Beginning July 1, the Bureau of Solid Waste will also require commercial haulers to have a solid waste collection permit and a commercial account with the county to use all three facilities.
