Today in History—June 9: The Global Fraud Case About Toxic Waste

On this day in 1986, brothers Jack and Charles Colbert were found guilty in a New York courtroom of running what they called a “surplus chemical business” and what the U.S. government called a notorious global toxic-waste brokerage.

Exporting hazardous waste to Africa was not what landed them in court, however.

In the late 1970s the surplus chemical business was booming. Between World War II and the Vietnam War, chemical production in America increased 900 percent. But as environmental regulations tightened, certain chemicals were restricted or banned, and manufacturers faced an expensive question: What do you do with chemicals you can no longer use?

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Federal regulations that took effect in 1980 restricted transportation, storage, management, and disposal. Suddenly, it was a lot more costly and complicated to get rid of your toxic sludge.

Enter the Colbert brothers.

They offered companies an alternative to expensive disposal. They bought unwanted chemicals from American manufacturers—sometimes the companies gave the waste away—and exported it to countries where the chemicals remained legal.

The brothers shipped their “recycled” products to more than 100 countries. For nearly two decades, the globalization of industrial waste proved lucrative.

And they might have continued to get away with it had they not run afoul of the U.S. government.

Toxic-waste trading might have been morally questionable—a wealthy country off-loading its environmental risks onto poorer ones—but it was legal. Fraud was another matter.

In the deal that landed them in court, the Colberts shipped 238 drums of waste to a chemical company in Zimbabwe, claiming the drums contained valuable industrial solvents. But the drums contained “garbage” from a chemical company in Ohio. They sold this material as perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene (both used in dry cleaning) for $55,000. But the drums contained just 1 percent of the chemicals on order.

The purchase had been financed by the USAID, and when the company in Zimbabwe reported it, federal investigations began. The result was one of the first and only times hazardous-waste traders have faced criminal convictions.

The brothers were each sentenced to 13 years in prison. Their companies were fined, and they were ordered to pay restitution.

But the case confirmed an uncomfortable reality: What brought down their business was not sending hazardous waste halfway around the world—it was lying about what was in the barrels.

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