Inside the slick operations to turn canola into criminal cash

Every day, it takes at least 35 pounds of cooking oil (a blend of canola and olive oil) for Huntington’s La Parma II restaurant to cook fried calamari, shrimp, zucchini, pan-fried food and other Italian delights.

And every day, workers empty the used cooking oil into a container in the back. But crude oil is not just waste. A hauler licensed by La Parma II pays the restaurant $1,000 to $1,200 a month, depending on volume and market rate, to siphon and load the oil, which is turned into biofuel, said general manager Vincent Castelli.

But with a rash of used cooking oil thefts on Long Island and beyond, it hasn’t always worked out that way for La Parma II and countless other restaurants.

Thieves have been stealing used cooking oil from both national chains and family restaurants. Some pose as contract carriers. Some are former employees of these carriers. Some wear fake uniforms and carry falsified muster lists. Whatever the scheme, the stolen oil is then sold, at discounted prices, for recycling on the black market, essentially stealing the restaurant’s oil revenue. They can be left behind at the crime scene with damage to the restaurant’s closed oil container and a greasy mess for staff to clean up.

In recent weeks, several men have been arrested on theft charges, accused of driving around the island taking oil from restaurants such as Mint Restaurant & Lounge in Garden City, The Cheesecake Factory in Westbury, Benihana in Westbury and Chick-fil-Locations in Westbury and Huntington Station. The criminal cases are pending; The accused thieves could not be reached for comment.

LI Police: More than 100 incidents this year

So far this year, there have been more than 100 incidents of cooking oil theft on the island, the Nassau and Suffolk police departments told Newsday earlier this month.

Patrick McCall, president of McCall Risk Group Inc., a private security and investigative firm based in Southampton and Manhattan, says he has been hired by seven carriers on Long Island to investigate thousands of cooking oil thefts since 2011 .

“Their locks are cut, or the boxes are broken and the oil is missing, and these companies go to these places and they’ll collect zero for weeks and months, and they say, ‘Hey, something’s going on; we’re collecting zero oil,’” he said.

McCall and his staff rethink. They also install motion-activated cameras that alert him and his staff via iPads when there is activity in a restaurant. Between Suffolk and Nassau, he said, his company has 73 such cameras, with a goal of 100 soon.

“We put them in hot spot areas. So at 2 in the morning when one of these burglars breaks in, it sends an immediate alert, the video comes up, and then we coordinate with whoever we have in the road, we immediately put a call in to our contact at the police department,” McCall said.

And if no one is there to receive the alert, or no one is able to respond, the video still captures what could be a thief’s license plate and sometimes a face; sometimes he is a known oil thief.

Neither the Nassau nor Suffolk police departments responded to questions for this story. But in a statement, Det. Nassau police spokesman Lt. Richard LeBrun reported at least eight cooking oil theft arrests so far this year, as many as in the previous two years combined.

McCall said thieves are seen on camera, “‘ughhh!’ struggling, trying to get the box out, and that’s when they’ll put in their pry bar, crow bar, or a drill and cut, and then squeeze the hose to get the oil out.

To store the valuable liquid, thieves will buy a van on Craigslist or at auction for $2,000 or $3,000, a garbage pump from Home Depot for $250 or $350, and some bags from a tractor supplier that hold 250 or 300 gallons each. Vans may have two or three bags in the back.

“For maybe three, four, five thousand dollars, they have this somewhat elaborate system that allows them to go out and steal,” McCall said.

Sometimes thieves carry fake documents purporting to be issued by legitimate carriers or even wear fake uniforms, including at least one made through the online marketplace Etsy, he said.

Black Market Oil Economy: $28,000

Used cooking oil can bring in a lot of money.

One of the men arrested in Nassau had receipts in his vehicle showing he got $28,352 over six days for fuel, McCall said. The man’s truck could hold 3,000 liters.

Lately, McCall said he or his team have followed thieves to buyers in New Jersey who don’t bother to ask questions about where the oil comes from. That buyer might pay $1.50 or $1.70 a gallon, under current market conditions, while a legitimate hauler might pay a restaurant about a dollar a gallon and sell the recycled product for about 4, $24, he said.

Black market or legitimate, recycled cooking oil is not only profitable; is environmentally friendly.

Used cooking oil is processed and recycled and can then be used for some diesel-powered automobiles, according to Buz Barstow, an assistant professor in Cornell University’s department of biological and environmental engineering.

The US Environmental Protection Agency said in 2017: “Biodiesel is an alternative fuel made from virgin vegetable oil or used vegetable oil. Even animal fats such as beef tallow and fish oil can use to make biodiesel fuel”.

Used cooking oil can also be filtered and resold to restaurants.

Up to $75 million worth of used cooking oil is stolen annually to turn it into biodiesel on the black market, according to a 2019 estimate by the National Renderers Association.

In La Parma II, Castelli said, the problem has gotten worse whenever gas prices go up. It was bad 15 or 20 years ago, and again in the last three years.

He recalled how before the coronavirus pandemic, the restaurant had removed its outdoor dining tents and left them in a dumpster, which was about 15 feet from the used oil container, for cleaning. professionally Then he got a call the next morning, from the company hired to do the job, complaining that there was grease everywhere.

Surveillance footage showed a thief botching an attempted robbery, spilling oil apparently from previous robberies before La Parma II’s oil could be vacuumed.

“Something happened with their pump in their truck. So instead of sucking it up, they spilled all the grease all over our parking lot, the tents, all the gear, everything we have,” he said. .

The loss: $26,000, he said.

Other times, he said, thieves have damaged the canister while trying to get the suction hose into it.

$300 weekly checks down to $40

Romeo Auer, owner of Barona Bay restaurant in Hampton Bays, which uses 300 pounds of cooking oil weekly to make French fries, chicken wings, fried cod, happy-hour bar fries and more, bought the restaurant in May. In the summer, he had experienced the first of what would become several thefts a month, which he noticed when the first carrier check was smaller than expected.

“I say, ‘How can that be?’ ” Auer said, noting that checks that should have been $200 or $300 a week were sometimes $40.

Although many of the thieves work at night or when the restaurant is full of business, some come during the day. Once, he caught a thief red-handed.

“They even know the legit guys’ schedules, so they would come a day before the legit guys, to make sure they have more,” Auer said.

When confronted, the thief said, “‘You’re on my list,'” Auer recalled.

Pressed further, the thief claimed he didn’t speak English and left.