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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Black-market bandits have their eyes on that vat of used frying oil in the alley behind your local greasy spoon.
Nov 6, 2000 | Jon Jaworski, a Houston attorney, first learned about grease theft in 1990. "I had a couple of Hispanic guys get busted in Galveston County at a Popeye's Fried Chicken," he recalls. "They just came into my office."
Jaworski got a not-guilty verdict, and then turned around and filed suit for malicious prosecution against the company that had accused his clients of grease theft. "I became, I guess, the hero of all the grease guys," he says, and grease cases began flooding in his door. Jaworski is known as "the grease lawyer," and has had calls on his expertise from as far away as Australia.
From Jaworski I learned of grease stings, grease vigilantes, alleged grease conspiracy and what I can only call grease embezzlement.
I first became intrigued by grease crime after reading a 1998 news story about two San Antonio, Texas, men convicted of stealing "thousands of pounds of used cooking grease." With the aid of hidden microphones, a surveillance camera and a former Texas Ranger, the two were caught in the act of buying 11,350 pounds of grease. An assistant manager for Griffin Industries, a grease company that said it was losing $10,000 a week from grease theft in Texas alone, estimated that there were 70 grease thieves operating in Texas. The grease thieves came by night to fast-food restaurants and filled their tankers with used grease from containers outside the restaurants, where the grease awaited pickup from companies like Griffin.
I clipped the story. At first all I cared about was the industry and the numbers. If there were 70 grease thieves in Texas, there ought to be around 120 grease thieves in my home state of California and perhaps 1,020 grease thieves nationwide. This is more than enough grease thieves to support an annual convention, which I felt could open with a no-host cocktail bar at my house.
For it is my assumption that grease thieves leave your place sparkling. Used cooking grease? Oh brother, I got it. I am sitting on a gold mine.
I simply wanted to know more about grease theft. But over time my outlook changed. Cloudy aspirations crystallized and grew: Why should I not become a grease thief myself? I've always felt that a glamorous life of international crime would make a great day job. But although I had a number of excellent outfits dreamed up, I'd never quite figured out what to steal. Jewelry has been done to death. Art is too subjective; I worry that I'd steal what I like, and nobody else would like it, and I wouldn't make money. I'd enjoy stealing secrets, but hardly anybody has any good ones.
Then I found out about grease theft. Perfect.
Where does the glamour reside? you may ask. Why, in the daring of it all, in crossing state lines to escape pursuit, in the tanker truck chase scenes and in lots and lots of dining out.
It's got novelty value. And best of all I'd be benefiting the environment, because selling used grease is all about recycling.
It couldn't miss. I began storyboarding a movie in my head. A caper flick about grease theft! Casting would be tricky, but I saw myself being played by someone like the young Grace Kelly, if only because of the obvious resemblance. But first I needed to learn a little more about the grease business, for that all-important opening sequence.
