Heists, arson and a baseball bat brawl: Police allege organized crime fought over clothing donation bins

W5: Bins for Profit | Part Four W5's Jon Woodward investigates how the removal of unlicensed donation bins can lead to violent reprisals.

This is part three of a four-part investigative series by CTV W5 into the seedy underbelly of the lucrative clothing donation bin industry. W5 correspondent Jon Woodward and producer Joseph Loiero look into allegations the industry is rife with organized crime activity.

Toronto-area police agencies linked a rash of assaults and arsons to a turf war between rival organized crime groups hoping to assert control over the surprisingly lucrative clothing donation industry, W5 has learned.

And those allegations may only be the tip of the iceberg of what court records and interviews show what could amount to a pattern of violence among some players in the industry that has even caught charities in the middle.

“The job is already hard enough as it is, and it just got 10 times harder because we had to deal with the vandalism and the turf war,” said Sylvia Krampelj of the Kidney Foundation of Canada.

Krampelj said her organization raises about a million dollars a year from clothes that are donated to her through clothing donation bins, and then either resold individually or in bulk.

And she says when others wanted a piece of their revenue, they targeted those Kidney Foundation clothing donation bins.

“We had people out for profits that were damaging our bins, vandalizing them, driving into them, stealing them, reselling the scrap, repainting them, doing anything and everything they could to get us off their turf,” she said.

“We don’t raise that money. It takes away from what they can do for kidney patients and for Canadians,” she said.

The money appears to be fuelling a battle over donation bins, where the clothes you give away turn out to be high-value targets for potentially organized criminals.

People with ‘pretty nasty backgrounds’

Retired York Regional Police Insp. Dieter Boeheim told W5 in an interview that when he was in the police service, he received intelligence of organized crime muscling in.

“It was what was called Albanian organized crime groups that were involved,” he said in an interview. “You have some people with some pretty nasty backgrounds involved in it.”

York and Peel Regional Police reports document aspects of the bin battle, suggesting that a struggle over donation bin territory was motivating the violence.

The York report says the people behind it, tied to Albanian organized crime on one side and Italian organized crime on the other, have put GPS units in their bins to track thefts.

However that has led to car chases involving the companies as they chase stolen bins, one report said.

“Altercations including intimidation and threats with pepper spray and baseball bats have been occurring at donation bin sites when drivers have attempted to do pickups,” the report said.

The fight over control of the industry erupted in 2013. According to the York Region Police report, one company hired an enforcement crew to take over another company’s route.

According to a bail hearing transcript, men from competing bin operations became involved in a violent confrontation in an Orangeville, Ont. parking lot.

Two men had their car windows smashed in with baseball bats. Two people were charged with assault and entered into peace bonds, and the charges were withdrawn.

A way to ‘launder money’

It may not just be the value of the clothes that is appealing to criminals. The Peel report says, “The used clothing industry… is known to be a lucrative cash business, thus making it attractive for organized crime to become involved as a way to launder money.”

The City of Markham, north of Toronto, had had enough of unlicensed clothing donation bins popping up and making messes, said former Deputy Mayor Jack Heath.

“There were many questionable companies that were putting them up there,” he said.

So he said their approach was to identify and remove what they called rogue bins. They got blowback, including threats to city staff. One had her tires slashed.

But Heath said he couldn’t give up. The city made a gamble and crews removed unlicensed bins. Instead of escalating the violence, those behind the bins moved off, he said.

“You’ve got to find a way to protect your staff. But you shouldn’t let people who are making threats, criminal threats, stop the kinds of initiatives that make a better city,” he said.

Now, every bin in Markham must be licensed and tied to a particular charity. If it’s not, it gets removed, he said. The city has removed about 200 in the past five years, city staff said.

“The most important thing to learn is go ahead and do it. You can do it,” Heath said.

For Krampelj, she hopes that people look closely at the bins they donate – and make sure it’s a reputable charity’s logo on the side.