Jarrod T. Hazelton pleaded guilty today in federal court of orchestrating a “junking” scheme at two Baltimore landfills that netted him and other city employees at least $400,000.

Hazelton, whose paycheck as a city laborer amounted to $30,119 last year, admitted that he used his work days to collect and sell scrap metal at the Quarantine Road Landfill and Northwest Transfer Station.

He covered up his activities by bribing his supervisor and submitting false time and attendance records.

The Parkville resident said he started selling metal for private profit immediately after joining the Department of Public Works (DPW) in 2005. He is now 32.

According to a statement of facts issued today by Rod J. Rosenstein, U.S. attorney for Maryland, Hazelton depended on other DPW employees for help in collecting and loading used TVs, computer parts, copper wires, household appliances, auto parts and other recyclable metal dumped at the landfills.

The employees devised an elaborate system for locating and claiming the metal, Rosenstein said, using their personal cell phones to communicate when and where recyclable scrap was being deposited at the landfills.
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MORE BREW COVERAGE OF THE LANDFILL SCANDAL:

• Waived fees and thievery by DPW employees cost city nearly $7 million (6/2/15)

• Landfill supervisor admits he accepted bribes over 30-year period (8/17/15)

• Two more haulers plead guilty to bribing DPW workers (11/2/15)
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Brazen Theft

The employees also were brazen. Hazelton not only falsified the time records that he submitted to DPW, but used his personal pick-up truck to transport the scrap out of the landfills to an unnamed salvage company.

“Frequently,” prosecutors said, he made “multiple trips during a single eight-hour work shift.”

To conceal his activities, Hazelton and a fellow conspirator, Michael T. Bennett, paid cash to their supervisor, William C. Nemec Sr., who later admitted that he had been accepting bribes as a city employee over three decades.

Nemec, Bennett and Tamara O. Washington have pleaded guilty to their roles in the landfill schemes and are awaiting sentencing.

Hazelton faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for conspiracy and 20 years for wire fraud. He is scheduled for sentencing before U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis in February 2016.

$560,000 in Lost Fees

His guilty plea comes in the wake of a five-day trial in which a Glen Burnie commercial trash hauler was convicted of paying bribes to some of the same employees in return for depositing his company’s trash in the Quarantine Landfill for free.

John H. Brady was convicted last Friday of paying bribes to Washington, a scale house operator, in exchange for her not recording the city’s $67.50-per-ton disposal fee for Brady’s trash.

Over a period of seven years, the city lost approximately $560,000 in disposal fees from Brady’s company, prosecutors said. In return, Brady paid roughly $100 in cash to Washington and other scale house operators for each freebie drop-off.

“Brady either paid the operator through the outbound window at the scale house or met the operators at an off-site location where he would pay a week’s worth of bribes or more,” prosecutors charged.

Brady faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for conspiracy and up to 10 years for each of two counts of bribery. He also is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Garbis in February.

In addition to Brady, five other commercial trash haulers have pleaded guilty to bribing DPW employees at the Quarantine Road Landfill in far South Baltimore.

Rudolph Chow, director of DPW, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake have not issued any formal statements about the landfill investigation.

The investigation came to light last June when two grand jury indictments were unsealed and five DPW employees, including Hazelton, Washington and Nemec, were arrested by federal agents.