Two commercial trash haulers have admitted to bribing Department of Public Works employees in return for dumping solid waste at a Curtis Bay landfill without paying Baltimore’s $67.50 per ton “tipping” fee.

Mustafa Sharif, 63, of Baltimore and Adam Williams Jr., 52, of Randallstown pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and bribery charges in connection to their often inventive ways of paying workers at the Quarantine Road Landfill.

As described when indictments were issued last month, Williams once sent a text message to an employee advising that $500 was wrapped inside a pack of gum handled off at the scale house.

Sharif showered another employee (who was working with prosecutors) with envelopes full of cash during prearranged drop-offs at Eastpoint Mall, Mondawmin Mall and elsewhere, according to the indictment.

In return for the haulers’ largess, the workers failed to enter the tag numbers of their trucks as they entered a computerized scale at the landfill.

The same workers failed to reweigh the trucks as they left the landfill. Thus the net weight of the trucks – for which the tipping fees were calculated – were never recorded into the system.

To cover their tracks, the employees often printed phony receipts that were handed to the drivers.

Cost of Conspiracy: $6 Million Plus

According to Rod J. Rosenstein, U.S. Attorney for Maryland, Baltimore City lost about $6 million in tipping fees from the conspiracies entered into by a number of commercial haulers and DPW employees.

Stealing recyclable scrap metal has resulted in additional hundreds of thousands of dollars being diverted into workers’ pockets, prosecutors charge.

Rampant theft has been going on at the Quarantine Landfill and Northwest Transfer Station for more than a decade, prosecutors – working with Baltimore Inspector General Robert H. Pearre Jr. – charged in June.

Under yesterday’s plea, Sharif agreed to pay $500,000 in restitution and Williams will pay back $900,000.

Each man also faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for the conspiracy and 10 years for bribery. They will be sentenced before U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis this fall.

Earlier this month, a scale-house operator, Tamara O. Washington, pleaded  to conspiracy and solicitation of bribes. As a city employee, the 15-year veteran of DPW’s Solid Waste Division was paid $35,000 a year, according to on-line records.

After investigators raided her house, Washington was fired by the city. She is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court on October 20.

How it Worked

According to prosecutors, Williams was introduced to Washington and other scale-house operators by a friend. He typically paid a $100 bribe to an operator for each trip he made to the landfill, which in turn saved him thousands in fees each month.

“From July 1, 2014 to May 1, 2015 alone, Williams paid more than $42,000 in bribe payments in lieu of paying the required waste disposal fees, which totaled approximately $120,000,” prosecutors said in a statement yesterday.

Williams clued in Sharif that he also could avoid the tipping fee if he paid $100 to the “girls” at the scale house.

Sharif typically paid his bribes weekly, either meeting with an employee at an area shopping mall or dropping off payments at a worker’s residence, according to prosecutors.

Sharif’s payments amounted to more than $4,000 a month until the scheme was broken up in May.

Five DPW employees were indicted last month by a federal grand jury for accepting bribes from haulers or stealing scrap from city landfills, a practice known as “junking.”