Arizona Family Nets Over $7 Million In (Not) Fake Recycling Scam

It's been deemed a "fraud" but, was it really?  Read on and decide for yourself...

Recycling is good for the environment, gets more life out of items and puts a couple of bucks back in the pockets of consumers. It's a win - win, right?

Unless you recycle items from Arizona in California. That, apparently, is frowned upon.

A family in Arizona recycled their (Arizona) materials in California and are now looking at federal prison time.

California's got no sense of humor these days.

A friend of mine who's a truck driver told me he has to wash his truck before entering Cali. Seems it's illegal to enter the state in a dirty semi.

Crazy laws and taxes help explain why all the Californians are moving to Texas.

Let's get back to those recycling rascals in Arizona. In La-La Land, there is a surcharge on recyclable containers that customers get back when the return it to a recycler.

The idea is to get people to recycle and it works. In this case tons of stuff was recycled, $7.6 million dollars worth to be exact but it wasn't a customer getting their money back, it was the state paying back a deposit it never received in the first place.

I see their concern but we get paid for recycling here in Texas without first paying a deposit. Should this really be a crime? Why doesn't California stop the deposit idea and just pay for the metal?

Ultimately, the objective is achieved ... right? Metal gets reused, litter declines and people who buy and sell recyclables go on about their business

A couple of years ago, 2 Arizonians made over twice that much money, $16 million, doing the same thing.

It's a flawed, "honor" system that's hard to regulate.

This isn't the only system hack either, there are several scams out there.

It seems, to me, that the smart thing to do would be to just set rates and honor them everywhere.

No one has to account for deposits, no one wonders why some cans never make it back ... say the user leaves the state with it or just tosses it ... and the metal still winds up in a plant that processes it for reuse.