Man who fraudulently stored waste found guilty

U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins announced that Wally K. El-Beck, age 61, of Springfield was found guilty after a trial by jury of 37 counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud. According to the indictment, El-Beck leased an Industrial Waste Incinerator from the City of Osceola to incinerate medical and industrial waste. The truckloads of waste would be delivered in large drums to the incinerator at Osceola. El-Beck represented to customers through Certificates of Destruction that their waste was being incinerated when in fact, he was accumulating the waste in warehouses. Over 13,000 drums were discovered by the Arkansas Department of Enviornmental Quality. This was reported immediately to the Environmental Protection Agency and El-Beck`s permit to incinerate was revoked. Because the waste had not been destroyed as previously represented by El-Beck, the customers were required, at additional expense, to reclaim the waste and have it destroyed elsewhere. Over 4 million dollars has been spent thus far from the EPA Superfund to clean-up this site. This is in addition to more than one million dollars spent by the victim companies who had paid El-Beck to incinerate their waste. El-Beck faces up to 20 years and/or $250,000 for each of the 37 Mail Fraud counts and the Wire Fraud count. (Copyright 2006 Newsroom Solutions, LLC)