City investigates Republic Waste's Houston office

(1/31/07 - KTRK/HOUSTON) (KTRK) -- 13 Undercover reporter Wayne Dolcefino has been digging into Republic Waste for months, first exposing dozens of illegal immigrants working there.

After today's immigration raid, city hall says it is investigating Republic's Houston office. City contractors have to abide with all state and federal laws, but the city does big business with the company and they knew a long time ago that some Republic employees had used phony Social Security numbers because we told them.

The big dawn immigration raid on Wilson Road is just the latest chapter in a city garbage scandal we first uncovered back in 2005.

Back then, we were on the hunt for possible fraud in Republic's Houston contract and we found it -- evidence the company was making Houstonians pay to dispose of garbage that wasn't ours in the first place.

The company would eventually repay taxpayers $2 million, but along the trail of trash, we found evidence of Social Security and immigration fraud at Republic.

Back then, we obtained a memo with the names of 90 Republic employees. Many we discovered had used phony Social Security numbers.

On the first of three pages of listed employees, nine of the Social Security numbers issued had never been issued by Social Security. Another five had Social Security numbers that came back to dead people.

One number belonged to someone who has been dead for 45 years.

"Just getting a phone call from you shocked me," said Kathleen Diesel. But that's not all the shocked Diesel. One of Republic's employees on the list had a Social Security number that belonged to her.

"How did he get it," she asked. "That's the deal, I don't know how he got it and I wished I did."

Republic said dozens of employees lost their jobs after that, but the Feds apparently moved on the information we first uncovered. We've learned an immigration audit of the company starting last fall across the country.

And the Republic fraud case? It was dropped because Houston police claimed they couldn't find any evidence of intent, even though we had hours of hidden camera video proving Houston taxpayers were ripped off.

Republic picks up trash for tens of thousands of Houstonians. So you're probably most worried about whether your garbage will get picked up tomorrow. Republic tells us they expect no problems even though dozens of their workers were taken away today for questioning.
(Copyright © 2007, KTRK-TV)

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