According to TurnTo23.Com in Bakersfield,
Professional Asbestos Removal Corporation, also known as PARC Environmental, pleaded guilty this morning before Chief United States District Judge Anthony W. Ishii to making a false statement in a uniform hazardous waste manifest in violation of the Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs the safe handling and storage of hazardous materials, including hazardous waste found at clandestine drug labs.
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According to Assistant United States Attorney Marlon Cobar, who prosecuted the case, during sentencing, which immediately followed PARC Environmental’s guilty plea this morning, Chief Judge Ishii imposed a criminal fine of $250,000 on the company and ordered it to pay DTSC $177,235.82 for investigative costs. PARC Environmental paid all of the ordered restitution this morning and will pay the fine, in full, within the next four months.
Chief Judge Ishii also sentenced PARC Environmental to three years of probation with special conditions contained in a strict corporate regulatory compliance program to be monitored by DTSC. The company is a leading provider of clandestine drug lab cleanup services to California law enforcement, and has already begun taking corrective measures in its operations.
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On June 18, 2008, under a standing contract with DEA, PARC Environmental responded to a clandestine drug lab cleanup site in San Francisco. With the explicit authorization of at least one of its managers, PARC Environmental falsely and fraudulently listed the name of an employee on a Uniform Hazardous Waste Manifest representing that the employee had been working at the San Francisco clandestine drug lab on June 18, 2008. Thereafter, PARC Environmental filed, maintained and used the false Uniform Hazardous Waste Manifest for purposes of compliance with Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act regulations. However, another employee, Jeffrey Alexander Lassotovitch , had been working at the cleanup site under the name of another employee. In fact, Lassotovitch was not authorized to work on DEA clandestine drug lab cleanups.
On August 27, 2008, DEA agents executed a federal search warrant at Lassotovitch’s home in Fresno and discovered that he was in possession of approximately 12 gallons of GHB which he had unlawfully taken from the DEA drug lab clean-up site in San Francisco on June 18, 2008, in order to distribute it. That was the same site in which Lassotovitch was not authorized to work, but where PARC Environmental falsely stated in a Uniform Hazardous Waste Manifest that he was another employee authorized to do so. In a separate case arising out of this investigation, on November 9, 2009, Chief Judge Ishii sentenced Lassotovitch to 37 months in prison for his conviction on an indictment charging him with Possession with the Intent to Distribute Gamma-Hydroxybutyric Acid (“GHB”)and Aiding and Abetting. GHB is commonly termed the “date rape drug.”