The Alarming Rise of Used Cooking Oil Theft: A Growing Concern in Minnesota
Video surveillance caught the liquid larceny: A man pulled a box truck behind a Maplewood strip mall in the wee hours in late October, got out, grabbed a hose and jammed it into a bin of used cooking oil outside Great Moon Buffet. He siphoned nearly $800 worth of grease from the restaurant, pumping it into a storage container in the back of the truck and slipping away into the darkness, according to felony charges against the alleged culprit, who’s also accused of hitting up two other restaurants.
“I had never heard of anything like this before,” said Derek Fritze, a 10-year Maplewood police detective who investigated the case. “Apparently, it’s a big thing.” The theft of used cooking oil has become a significant problem in the United States, with thieves stealing up to $80 million worth of the grease every year, up from $42 million in 2013, according to Kent Swisher, president and CEO of the North American Renderers Association.
The Economics of Used Cooking Oil
The global used cooking oil market is expanding rapidly, valued at $7 billion in 2023 and expected to top $14 billion by 2033, according to market analysts. U.S. restaurants have been getting 10 to 50 cents per gallon this year for the grease, says Florida-based recycler Grease Connections. Renderers and smaller businesses collect the oil from restaurants, who are compensated depending on the volume. It’s then processed and sold to refineries, where it’s used to produce biofuel and as a nutritional additive in animal feed.
A manager at Great Moon Buffet noticed the restaurant had only been getting about $15 a month — instead of the usual $600 to $700 — because the amount of used cooking oil in the barrel out back was low when picked up by Sanimax, a rendering company with a plant in South St. Paul. So he put up surveillance cameras, which caught the illicit act going down just before 4 a.m. Oct. 23. Cameras got an image of the man’s face, and the back license plate of his white box truck.
Prevention Tactics and Investigations
To try to prevent the thievery, Sanimax puts its bins inside restaurants when there’s room or puts locks on them. However, thieves are known to drill through the bin to get at the oil, said Mike Karman, Sanimax vice president of procurement. Expensive anti-theft lids are also an option, although thieves can still find ways to steal the oil. Sanimax also does its own surveillance, without getting into the details.
Sanimax told police that the man who took the Great Moon Buffet grease could be employed or contracted by rival recycling business Greasehauler. Sanimax did its own investigation and found the man’s truck parked at Greasehauler’s plant in Plato, Minn., several times. Greasehauler owner Lev Mirman, when contacted, said he had never heard of the man charged in the Great Moon Buffet theft.
Federal Involvement and Syndicates
The alleged capers range from a lone man with a single truck to an organized ring running a whole fleet. A federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted 21 co-conspirators — including 12 from Mexico and one from Turkey — on several charges in 2019 for allegedly stealing nearly $4 million worth of used cooking oil over five years. The ring operated across North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, storing the stolen grease in a warehouse.
In December, a federal grand jury in western New York announced the indictment of six New York men for allegedly stealing at least 90,000 pounds of used grease from restaurants in and around Rochester. They sold the oil to a broker, who sold it to a refinery in Erie, Pennsylvania. Swisher said his association disbanded their task force after renderers started taking theft precautions, including cameras, private investigators, and cash rewards to try to catch the thieves.
Read more about the used cooking oil theft in Minnesota and the efforts to prevent it Here
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