Recycling executive gets 3 years for selling, dumping hazardous waste

A Chicago area recycling executive was sentenced to prison Thursday after pleading guilty to reselling and dumping electronics for a profit.

The former owner of two suburban recycling companies, Brian Brundage, 47, of Schererville, Indiana, was facing up to 25 years in prison when he entered a guilty plea in September on two separate counts of wire fraud and tax evasion, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office of the Northern District of Illinois.

Instead, Brundage was will serve a three-year prison sentence and pay more than $1.2 million in restitution to his victims, prosecutors said.

In his guilty plea, Brundage admitted to evading $743,984 in federal taxes by concealing income from selling electronic waste meant for recycling, prosecutors said. He also pleaded guilty to recording payments to himself as businesses expenses over the course of 10 years.

Brundage owned two companies, Intercon Solutions Inc. of Chicago Heights and EncironGreen Processing LLC, which advertised themselves as environmentally conscious ways for clients to recycle electronic waste, such as cathode ray tubes.

In reality, Brundage’s companies stockpiled, landfilled or resold the hazardous waste for a profit to companies that shipped the material overseas, prosecutors said.

Another part of Brundage’s scheme was to resell calculators he was paid to recycle, prosecutors said. He made $2.4 million by reselling calculators between 2008 and 2015, prosecutors said.

Brundage hid the profits from the IRS by redirecting the money to pay for personal expenses, including credit card bills, payments on a personal loan, reimbursements to his housekeeper, jewelry purchases and payments to Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana, prosecutors said.

Brundage was indicted in Dec. 2016 on five counts of income tax evasion, four counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud.