Crime doesn’t pay for slick criminals.

Crime doesn’t pay for slick criminals. August 27, 2010

Posted by Eli in : Uncategorized , trackback

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The Santa Monica Daily Press has let me know that there is a new deviant running wild on the streets of Santa Monica. It is no longer safe for me to take my industrial sized used oil receptacle for casual walks on the promenade or to the pier. Why you ask? Because people are: STEALING USED COOKING OIL, FILTERING IT AND RE-SELLING IT FOR A PROFIT!

According to Sgt. Jay Trisler, a spokesman for the SMPD “Once it’s filtered, the used oil can retail for a couple of dollars per gallon, making large restaurant receptacles potentially lucrative targets.”

Now embark with me on a math journey. Let’s say there is 100 gallons of used oil behind a Carl’s Jr. Some dudes show up, transfer the oil into another container,load it into a car, drive it back to Whittier, remove it from the vehicle, filter it, then sell it as Bio-fuel. And for all that, they are clearing $150 each max?

I’m looking at this two ways…

1) These dudes are savvy businessmen. They love the environment and have found a great “green” business model doing the fast food chain, area residents and the world a huge favor by re-purposing used cooking oil. (Don’t people get grants for doing things like this?)

2) These same guys are idiots. a) This sounds messy as fuck. Have you ever emptied used oil into a receptacle behind a restaurant? It’s a slippery, meat stink, hotel pan balancing nightmare where no on hears about success but failure haunts you for life as you re-emerge in the kitchen covered in sick smelling cooking grease holding an empty hotel pan cursing “give me a mop, screw you, I hate my life.” Now consider these guys trying to empty used cooking oil receptacles quickly and without getting caught. b) It’s not like this stuff is black gold. I mean…a couple bucks a gallon? These guys roll back to Whittier with massive jugs of used cooking oil sloshing around in the back of their 1998 Nissan Maxima. They pull up to the “safe house” where people are cutting cocaine and these guys are on the other side of the warehouse slumming it for $3.02 a gallon.

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-”I made a few hundred bucks today”

- “but you made it in a sleazy way. Sellin used cooking oil as bio-fuel to the (progressive) kids (driving a prius)”

- “I gotta get paid”

- Well hey that’s just the way it is”

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Original article here: http://www.smdp.com/Articles-c-2010-08-25-70193.113116_Alleged_cooking_oil_thieves_nabbed.html

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