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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    6

    Default Janitor Convicted For Selling Garbage At A Used Goods Store

    We live in North Dakota. My husband worked for an independant contractor that taught & supervised handi-capped people to work. They did janitorial work. Part of my husbands job was bringing the garbage in huge dumpsters up to where the garbage man dumped them into the garbage truck. For the first 2 1/2 years my husband worked there the garbage man took the garbage and didn't crush the stuff because there were books, cd's and tons of other stuff, he even ran an add in a local news paper to sell cds. One dumpster could have thousands of cd's in it.
    There were no signs posted saying you weren't suppose to take garbage or that it was illeagal. They had no written policy or even a lousy memo that was given to them. Every day my husband watched post office workers and other contracters dig through the garbage and take things. Even the security guards took stuff. My husband even knows a man who had gone to Minneapolis MN to the Post Office to auctions were they sold the cd's in lotts.
    My husband started taking cd's home and selling them to a used cd store. He worked there for 5 1/2 more years and continued to take cds home.
    Then he was fired the first week of July for taking the cd's. They told him if he had any cd's at home they wanted them to destroy them. He said, "That's fine and let them come and take them to destory them". Two months later they charged him with 2 felonys for theft of post office mail and possetion of stolen property. They NEVER went and took back the cd's he had sold from the used cd store that still had a huge number of them in stock. They threatened him with a prison sentence and HUGE fines. Then a month later they offered him a deal if he would plead to a misdemenor of copy right infringment. We had a court appointed attorney and he advised my husband that going to trial he could end up serving time in prison. So he plead guilty to that. At the sentencing the judge said that it isn't garbage until it is in a hole in the landfill and that the responsibility still exists to keep them sucured until that point. He sentenced my husband to 2 years of probation (he has never even had a speeding ticket in his life) and ordered to repay the cd company 78,810.00.
    There are several points I don't understand and I believe are just wrong. First of all they said it was a loss of profit to the cd company but they never took the cds back from the store. They could have returned thousands of cds. There were no signs or a written policy as to the destruction of the cds. They were put into garbage bags and into dumpsters sometimes piled next to the dumpster. My husband is being held responsible for what I believe should be the Post Offices responsibility. WHy isn't the Post Office responsible for seeling that a policy was put into place and then followed for the secured destruction of these items? Who's responsibility was it to make sure they were desposed of in a secure way? I work at a medical center and when we destroy client information the center is responsible to a policy to see that the information is desposed of in a secure manner. It is kept in a locked room until it is destroyed. If we through a client's chart in the garbage and the janitor got it ....it would US that were responsible NOT the janitor. I also don't understand how a United States Post Office could sell them in lotts. They were depriving the cd company of profits and putting the cds out into the market. The United States Govt. has been doing the VERY thing my husband was sentenced for. The prosecutor said this was an "Intellectual Crime" and that it was the number of cds he had taken over the 5 1/2 years. Soooo it's not illeagel to take some just don't talke too many? How intellectual do you have to be to see something in the garbage and know you could sell it. People do it on garbage clean up week all the time. They have tried to make him out to be this criminal saying that he snuck the cds. He worked until 7:00 or 7:30 at night. There wasn't anyone around when he finnished his shift. They said they GOT him on a servalence camera hiding the cds in a garbage can. Christ,,,,he had a garbage can that rolled, and he had put a bag with cds in it and then kept the regular garbage in a seperate garbage bag ....doesn't take a genius to figure out he didn't want to have to seperate the cds from the yucky stuff. Besides, if my neighbor through something out on his brim for garbage pick up and I wanted to take it, I would probably wait until after dark so that all my neighbors wouldn't see me. Not because I thought it was illeagel but because people might look down on me for taking something out of the garbage. Our family makes under 45,000.00 a year and we have two children. Paying back this 78,810.00 will take us a life time. Even if we could pay 200.00 a month which will be a stretch, it will take us almost 33 years to pay this off. It is a LIFE sentence for a misdemenor. We feel hopeless and feel like we are being punished VERY severally. The attorney said we can talk about an appeal, but he doesn't want us to get our hopes up. We need help. Some advice and some hope.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Behind a Desk
    Posts
    98,846

    Default Re: Janitor takes garbage and sells at used shop - sentenced to pay 78,810.00

    That's a long post which tells us very little about what happened. Obviously he was accused of stealing the CD's, so there's more to the story than "they were in a dumpster". Give us that important part, in a short, concise paragraph, so we can understand what happened. Where did the CD's come from? Who did they belong to? Why were they in the garbage in such quantities? What was the nature of the facility where your husband worked, that it handled these huge CD disposals?

    What statute was he convicted of violating?

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    6

    Default Re: Janitor takes garbage and sells at used shop - sentenced to pay 78,810.00

    I appologize for not being more concise.
    He was a janitor for a company that had a contract to clean the Post Office.
    The cds are from cd clubs and they are returned undeliverable. There is such a large number because they not only have the ones that come back to this facility, they also bring the ones from a lot of smaller towns. People at the Post Office take information off of the returned package that goes back to the cd company and they throw the cd away.
    He plead guilty to Superseding Information charging Criminal Infringement of Copyrights, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 231(b)(3), and Title 17, United States Code, Section 506 (a). My husbands Attorney argued that BMG had abandoned the cds when they were thrown away.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    6

    Default Re: Janitor takes garbage and sells at used shop - sentenced to pay 78,810.00

    One other fact regarding this case. The prosecutor claimed that this was theft of property. They knew where the cds were sold and the used cd stores still had thousands in inventory but they didn't take them back to recover "the properly" therefore recovering some of the loss of profit.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Posts
    563

    Default Re: Janitor takes garbage and sells at used shop - sentenced to pay 78,810.00

    hmm, once they become undeliverable does ownership revert back to the post office? once the post office puts them in the trash bin are they considered abandoning? did he take them from the dumpster..the trashcan in the post office? was the dumpster on postal property?

    i think that with personal trash it is not yet considered abandoned until i actually put it out on the curb off my property. until i do that i still own my trash and if you are in my house or in my yard taking things from my trash cans then you are technically stealing from me.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    Michigan
    Posts
    28,906

    Default Re: Janitor takes garbage and sells at used shop - sentenced to pay 78,810.00

    I'm a bit confused about how so many CD's could be returned as undeliverable. Why isn't it possible to read the address on the CD label? Or, if it's what you are suggesting, why would post office employees remove that information from the packaging rather than doing their jobs and returning the CD's? Rightly or wrongly, it sounds like the Post Office and prosecutor alleged that your husband was not taking garbage, but that he was smuggling returned mail out in the trash.

    In some situations, if a defendant makes a good faith effort to repay the restitution during the period of probation, the defendant may be discharged from probation even though some restitution remains unpaid. Your husband is on two years probation, and probably is expected to repay a specific amount of restitution each month - if that's the case, it would be pretty clear that the probation officer does not expect him to be able to pay off the entire balance during the term of probation. Your husband should consider asking his lawyer or even his probation officer, "What's going to happen at the end of my probation, because it's obvious I can't pay all of this off in two years?"

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    38,867

    Default Re: Janitor takes garbage and sells at used shop - sentenced to pay 78,810.00

    Quote Quoting Nutniks4
    View Post
    The cds are from cd clubs and they are returned undeliverable. There is such a large number because they not only have the ones that come back to this facility, they also bring the ones from a lot of smaller towns. People at the Post Office take information off of the returned package that goes back to the cd company and they throw the cd away.
    He plead guilty to Superseding Information charging Criminal Infringement of Copyrights, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 231(b)(3), and Title 17, United States Code, Section 506 (a). My husbands Attorney argued that BMG had abandoned the cds when they were thrown away.
    the property is still private property. If the dumpster the cd's are retrieved from is on public right of way, take whatever you want. If the trash is still under control of a private enitity (still on private property) it is still private property and taking it is theft .

    I would imagine the dumpster a post office uses is on the PO property and is never available for dumpster diving. The property then either becomes property of the company that picks it up or if contracted as such, the ownership coud still be maintained by the post office. The stuff is then dumped and still not accessible to be taken as abandoned trash.

    considering the security situation with mail in general, I would think it very possible the PO maintains ownership, or at least control, possibly forever.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    6

    Default Re: Janitor takes garbage and sells at used shop - sentenced to pay 78,810.00

    The cds have a code that is scanned on the lable. After they are scanned they are thrown into garbages and the garbage bags thrown into dumpsters. That is where they were taken from.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    6

    Default Re: Janitor takes garbage and sells at used shop - sentenced to pay 78,810.00

    THey were in dumpsters lined up for the garbage truck. Actually, there is a case that went all the way to the supreme court that found that if the garbage is in public view, even garbage cans sitting next to your house, police do not have to get a warrent because the stuff is concidered abandoned. The judge in this case said, "It is NOT abandonded garbage until in is IN A WHOLE at the landfil.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    6

    Default Re: Janitor takes garbage and sells at used shop - sentenced to pay 78,810.00

    They are returned in massive numbers. The are scanned and put into garbage bags and then thrown into dumpsters. Actually, the post office in Minnapolis for years and years auctioned them off in lotts.
    The other thing I don't understand is why they called it theft but didn't have the legal standing to take the cds back from the used cd store because they had come out of the garbage.

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