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The list of victims of the region’s latest crime wave is more like a menu. Taco Bell. Russell’s.
Lucia’s on the Lake. Doc Sullivan’s. And on one day alone, seven restaurants on Transit Road.
But in every case, the thieves were not looking for money. What they wanted – and what they got – was used cooking oil. What sounds like a laughing matter is anything but, putting the lives of restaurant employees in danger and costing one local business that collects the material an estimated $45 million over the past two years.
Worse, law enforcement has been unable or unwilling to put a dent in the criminal enterprise that officials say has become a money-maker for organized crime. “There’s not much we can do at this point here,” said Sumit Majumdar, the president and CEO of Buffalo Biodiesel. “We’re getting destroyed.
” Zachary Mezaros, a vac driver with Buffalo Biodiesel, empties a container of used cooking oil into his truck outside of Russell’s Steaks, Chops, & More on Nov. 1. Organized crime is profiting from the theft of used cooking oil.
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in the city, Buffalo Biodiesel collects used cooking oil from 25,000 restaurants across 15 states, Majumdar said. The company turns what used to be a waste product into feedstock for biofuel production at its Tonawanda plant. From Jan.
1 through Oct. 28, Buffalo Biodiesel recorded 2,910 oil thefts, according to records the company shared with The Buffalo News. The thefts occurred in New York, Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and West Virginia.
Oil streaks are seen on a container of used cooking oil at Russell's Steaks, Chops, & More. A valuable commodity Biodiesel has grown in popularity as states like California and New York and large, private corporations strive to reduce their carbon footprints. Biodiesel is a renewable, biodegradable, nontoxic fuel that can be used in diesel engines and other equipment that runs on diesel fuel, like trucks, heating systems and airplanes.
It burns cleaner and can reduce carbon emissions an average of 74%, said Stephen Dodge, director of state regulatory affairs at Clean Fuels Alliance America , a trade association that represents the biomass-based diesel industry. Biodiesel can be made from soy, oil and animal fats. The most popular raw material that is turned to biodiesel is used cooking oil, Dodge said.
Cooking oil drips from a vacuum hose as Zachary Mezaros, a vac driver with Buffalo Biodiesel, empties a container of used cooking oil into his truck outside of Russell's Steaks, Chops, & More on Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. Last year, more than 4 billion gallons of biodiesel were produced in the United States, Dodge said.
As production of biodiesel continues to grow, so does the demand for and value of used cooking oil. “The feedstocks are more valuable because there’s an increasing demand for biodiesel, so used cooking oil is becoming more valuable as a feedstock and that’s why you’re seeing more thefts,” Dodge said. Buffalo Biodiesel has dealt with thefts for a while, primarily in downstate New York and the New York City area, Majumdar said.
But in the last year, the thefts have become increasingly common in Western New York. Buffalo Biodiesel has assembled a team of law enforcement officials to advise the company and act as liaisons with police and prosecutors, including former Erie County District Attorney John Flynn. Prosecution is not easy Flynn, who stepped down as DA in March to join the law firm Lippes Mathias, said cases of grease theft have not been a priority for law enforcement.
If someone is caught stealing oil from a couple of restaurants, the value of the grease taken is likely not enough to rise to the level of felony grand larceny in New York, which starts at $1,000. Former Erie County District Attorney John Flynn is working with Buffalo Biodiesel to help the company deal with thefts that have cost it millions of dollars. If someone is charged with stealing something worth less than $1,000, they face a misdemeanor charge of petit larceny and up to one year in jail.
“Every DA’s office is busy. A petit larceny is not a murder, so they’re just not taken seriously,” he said. But Flynn, in his role working with the company, is trying to educate law enforcement that this is more than just petit larceny: It’s organized crime.
In 2023, six men in the Rochester area were charged with conspiracy to steal and sell restaurant cooking oil in federal court. According to the United States Attorney’s Office in the Western District of New York, police discovered 12,461 gallons of unrefined oil, worth over $73,000, at a warehouse in Rochester. In total, the men sold and shipped 95,320 gallons of stolen oil to a refinery in Erie, Pa.
They were paid $60,051 for these two shipments, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
A larger grease theft ring was busted in the South in 2019, when federal prosecutors charged 21 people in North Carolina with conspiracy to transport stolen goods across state lines and money laundering. According to prosecutors, the thieves targeted restaurants in North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia and transported thousands of gallons of oil to New Jersey for sale and distribution. Many of the people involved were from Mexico.
And in Tennessee, a law enforcement task force spent three years investigating a criminal organization of thieves from China who stole used cooking oil from restaurants in Tennessee, Alabama, Iowa, Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky and Oklahoma, a Nashville news station reported . The money these criminal organizations make from selling the stolen cooking oil is laundered and used for other illegal things, like drug and human trafficking, Flynn said. But proving these thefts are part of organized crime is not easy, Flynn said.
“You have to ascertain information to show that it is an organized effort, that is part of an organized crime ring,” he said. “That’s always difficult. You need proof of coordination.
You need proof that there’s a ringleader and that there’s instructions being given to the people who are actually on the ground, going out and doing this sort of theft.” Another problem is catching the thieves. Zachary Mezaros, a vac driver with Buffalo Biodiesel, uses a vacuum hose to empty a container of used cooking oil into his truck outside of Russell's Steaks, Chops, & More on Friday, Nov.
1, 2024. In the majority of the cases Flynn is reviewing, the thieves are not local to the area where they’re committing crimes, he said. Most of the thefts happen at night after the restaurants are closed.
The thieves work quickly, breaking into the vats, sucking the oil out into the tanks on their vehicles and then take off. And if police do catch them, they are usually charged with a low-level crime and issued an appearance ticket. A lot of times, they leave the area and never come back for court, Majumdar said.
Flynn stressed this crime is serious and it hurts local businesses. “This organized criminal element is in our community,” Flynn said. “It’s in our neighborhoods.
It’s driving trucks onto local business properties in Cheektowaga, Amherst, Buffalo, Kenmore, all of our communities. Mom-and-pop restaurants, small businesses are being subject to this type of organized theft.” The danger is growing In addition to losing millions of dollars annually due to the thefts, Buffalo Biodiesel is also missing out on local expansion opportunities.
The company processes all the oil it collects at its Tonawanda plant. It has not been able to expand its production and, in turn, create more local jobs, said Mark Grisanti, a former state senator and Supreme Court justice who now works as Buffalo Biodiesel’s general counsel. The company has lost employees who quit because they are scared of encountering the grease thieves, Majumdar said.
His employees and restaurant customers have been intimidated and harassed by the thieves if they happen to run into them stealing the oil. A few restaurant workers have been assaulted, Majumdar said. Majumdar advises his employees and restaurant owners not to confront the thieves and instead call the police immediately.
“Unfortunately, what’s going to end up happening is somebody’s going to end up getting killed,” Majumdar said. “There’s been already, that I’m aware of, four close calls. One high-speed chase, three assaults with a vehicle.
There’s been guns seized from arrests. There’s long rap sheets all the way to outstanding homicide warrants.” Zachary Mezaros, a vac driver with Buffalo Biodiesel, backs his truck into a space to collect used cooking oil from Russell's Steaks, Chops, & More on Friday, Nov.
1, 2024. In 2021 in West Pittston, Pa., a borough about 13 miles from Scranton, Steven Caraballo Matos was charged with assaulting a restaurant owner while stealing cooking oil from the eatery.
Caraballo Matos and another unidentified person were stealing oil from a barbecue restaurant when the owner pulled up in his car and tried to block the men and their utility van in, the Times-Tribune reported . The thieves rammed into the restaurant owner’s car before fleeing the scene. Since then, Caraballo Matos has been charged at least twice with stealing cooking oil in Pennsylvania – in April in the Pocono Mountains region and in June near Scranton, according to local news reports.
In what might be one of the most unsettling theft instances Buffalo Biodiesel has dealt with, a man caught on camera stealing oil from a Tonawanda restaurant was later extradited back to Spain on a homicide warrant, Majumdar said. According to the Green County Sheriff’s Office in Pennsylvania, in February, Pennsylvania State Police attempted to pull over Carlos Ariel Diaz-Moralez, who was driving a box truck from the Bronx. Diaz-Moralez abandoned the truck and fled into a wooded area.
Police used a law enforcement dog to track him down. When officers deployed the dog to bring Diaz-Moralez down, he struck the dog multiple times, according to the Sheriff’s Office. After Diaz-Moralez was arrested, law enforcement discovered he was wanted for homicide in Spain.
Police also found he had forged passports and was from the Dominican Republic but in the United States illegally. “I don’t care if I go out of business,” Majumdar said. “My biggest concern is having one of my employees assaulted or killed, or one of my restaurant owners – that have already been assaulted – getting killed.
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