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The Honey Launderers: Uncovering the Largest Food Fraud in U.S. History
- davvid 13y agoI get a broken link on my mobile device. This link seems to work, though: http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-19/how-germany-s-alw-got-busted-for-the-largest-food-fraud-in-u-dot-s-dot-history http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-19/how-germa...
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoI'm all for harsh punitive measures for (convicted) business-crooks, but are these SWAT raids on peoples' businesses (and homes) ever a good idea? What good can come from a bunch of stormtroopers bum-rushing an office?
- adamnemecek 13y agoJustification for budget increases of said SWAT teams? /s
- tnorthcutt 13y agoAbsolutely. You might be interested in Radley Balko's book: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americas/dp/1610392116 http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...
- throwawayyyz 13y agoIntimidation. They use the same tactics against raw dairy operations.
- maratd 13y agoBingo. You see a bunch of guys with machine guns coming out of nowhere, you may spill your beans right there and all of that is admissible in court.
- lostlogin 13y agoWe New Zealanders are so in awe of this BS technique that we showed off our copy to our US overlords with the Dotcom raid. Unfortunately we neglected to make the techniques used legal first, so the drawn out court process has been a bit painful and compensation payouts to him are likely.
- porpoisemonkey 13y agoI'm not sure where you got the idea that these raids were conducted by SWAT teams. The article only vaguely alludes to "federal agents".
- dredmorbius 13y agoIn bulletproof vests. Presumably heavily armed.
- porpoisemonkey 13y agoI don't think that just because they were wearing bulletproof vests you can reasonably infer "SWAT". Many law enforcement agencies have written or unwritten requirements to wear bulletproof vests when in the field. http://www.bja.gov/Publications/PERF_BodyArmor.pdf http://www.bja.gov/Publications/PERF_BodyArmor.pdf "Our first main finding was that almost all law enforcement agencies (99.4 per- cent) from across the country report that their officers wear body armor when on duty." - BJA/PERF Body Armor National Survey - page 36
- DanBC 13y agoIgnoring the word "SWAT" for the moment this was a raid on corporate offices for people smuggling honey. I'm not sure why officers were armed. I guess I can understand why they wear protective clothing (but are shootings in that situation common?) Are honey smugglers really going to shoot law enforcement? You need lots of people in the raid to prevent employees shredding and deleting everything.
- a3n 13y ago> I'm not sure why officers were armed. My assumption is that any officer who is armed at the moment is always armed, and any officer who is always armed will be armed when he visits you. In other words, being armed in this instance may not be particularly interesting. Now, if they had their arms drawn at the ready, that might be more than interesting.
- enraged_camel 13y agoI hate defending the feds here, but often times these types of legitimate-looking businesses are actually fronts for something else, such as arms trade. When you're raiding an office you have no idea what you will find, so it's better to be over-prepared and over-armed than under-prepared and under-armed.
- einhverfr 13y agoSure. But by that logic, why don't we have the SWAT teams perform all traffic stops? I would be willing to bet that more cops are shot during traffic stops than anywhere else.....
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago>When you're raiding an office you have no idea what you will find, These are not responders chasing a suspect, they are investigators. How does a professional investigator find himself in some kind of Jean Claude van Damme B-movie-esque arms warehouse cum office by surprise? Sounds like you think they shouldn't need to investigate anything, just barge in and see how it goes. >so it's better to be over-prepared and over-armed than under-prepared and under-armed. Better for whom?
- ck2 13y agoThe largest food fraud in the US is not honey. It is the corporate farming conglomerates who take government welfare to not grow any crops at all many years. $11 BILLION taxpayer money paid to not grow crops since 2003. Seriously, google it. That and massive subsidies for ethanol from corn. Most massive scam in US history. Oh and they de-coupled foodstamps from corporate welfare now so expect this to become more insane over the rest of the decade.
- lostlogin 13y agoIt stunts other countries too. Aggressive protectionism affects those who want to sell to America, although this probably isn't of too much concern to Americans.
- Nursie 13y agoIt does rather expose the arch-evangelist of free trade, the USA, as a bit of a hypocrite.
- jared314 13y agoI like your call to arms and encourage you to both be angry and participate in the legislative process. But, the US imported $82 billion dollars worth of agricultural products in 2010 [1]. This makes the US potentially dependent on foreign nations for basic necessities. Preventing the loss of self-sufficient food and agriculture production, at a level that will provide for the population and keep prices reasonable during a crisis, is an aspect of national security. [1] http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0851.pdf http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0851.p...
- joering2 13y agoUnless there is a good reason I am not aware of (please tell me), if something can be done cheaper, better, etc, at home, then why would you want to stop that process and import, and still pay double (for import and for do-not-product). I agree with OP, regardless the reason, it sounds like huge scam.
- twelve40 13y agoPaint some bees on the containers, replace ALW with Madrigal GmbH, Hamburg with Hannover, and you get another eposide of...
- coldarchon 13y agoreplace honey with mortgages, replace containers with mortgage-backed securities, paint some rating on the securities, replace ALW with Lehman Brothers and you get the financial crisis of 2007 .. Oops!
- iamshs 13y agoSo only punishment for the fraud (of masking the country of origin, adulterating honey with banned antibiotics, rice molasses and such) was one year of jail for two executives, who were declared rogue by the company after their arrest. How will you deter future frauds then?
- gcb1 13y agothis part reminded me of breaking bad.
- eriksank 13y agoYou must be confusing morality with complying with regulations. The one has got nothing to do with the other. It is actually quite the opposite: "And then spoke the creator, the god who freed us out of slavery in Egypt. One. First Law. You shall not recognize any other lawmaker than me." The punishment for breaking the First Law, is that you shall become a slave again. You probably are one already.
- adamnemecek 13y agoI wonder whether they were arrested in a sting operation.
- danso 13y agoLast year I visited Germany for the first time and was astounded at how good their English was, despite it being so far from French/Spanish/Italian (which I'm a little familiar with)...everywhere I went, people were happy to speak to me in English, almost in a slightly condescending way, like "poor American, let me speak your language for you" (and the condescension is well-deserved, IMO). But wow, the German executives at hand must think Americans are really anti-multi-lingualism if "WRITE IT IN GERMAN" is one of their protocols for obfuscating their fraud.
- _delirium 13y agoIt's getting more common in Europe to be fine with speaking English in a variety of circumstances, not mainly because of Americans, but because it's often the only feasible way to communicate among Europeans. When Danes visit Berlin, they typically speak English, and when Germans visit Copenhagen, they typically speak English there too.
- Locke1689 13y agoYou're aware English is primarily a Germanic language, right?
- TillE 13y agoNot particularly relevant, partly because English has been corrupted by all sorts of influences. There's some common vocabulary, but the syntax and sound are very very different. Look at it from the other perspective: German is commonly (and IMO properly) considered a bit harder for anglophones to learn as compared to Spanish or Italian. The linguistic family is only a small piece of information, and doesn't tell the whole story.
- asveikau 13y agoAs far as I know the fact that "the sound is different" from most European languages is not really due to any "corruption" (like the Norman Conquest) but due to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift Quoting from the Wikipedia article linked above: > Vowels of Middle English had "continental" values much like those remaining in Spanish and liturgical Latin. However, during the Great Vowel Shift, the two highest long vowels became diphthongs, and the other five underwent an increase in tongue height. As for syntax I've always heard and read that it sounds very natural to speakers of Germanic languages.
- coldcode 13y agoAlways buy local honey from real beekeepers. Otherwise you are probably buying sugar water made by non worker bees.
- rdtsc 13y agoDoesn't that open a market for local "beekeepers" to buy honey from China and package it up with inkjet printed labels and hand screwed lids that say "local from <insert town>"? Placebo and power of suggestion is strong. I often wonder myself if produce I am buying at farmers markets a really authentic or just resold produce from grown on a large agro-business farm someplace across the country. Also, I am a ware of a scheme that is importing Chinese garlic into Western Europe through Eastern Europe. You see Chinese garlic much like honey is banned there. Yet unbeknownst to them West Europeans (Germans, French) have been chowing down on Chinese garlic for a while now. The way it works it like this. A large shipment is brought into a city next to the EU border. Then small paid cargo van drivers make lots of trips across the border seemingly as local farmers going about their business. Then it is either sold at farmers market or "local" farmers buy it from them and sell it as "local" produce. Easy peasy.
- einhverfr 13y agoBees can be raised, with a few precautions, even in urban settings. What you really need is an experienced mentor who can help consider things like where to place the hive so it doesn't pose a problem for neighborhood kids (rooftop is good btw), and other precautions, such as not wearing gloves when handling the bees if in an urban environment.
- gcb1 13y agothe take away in this history is that if they sold honey at regular prices at the honey holdings "over the table" while still giving the deal to the buyer and eating the fiscal difference for the fake vs received price, they would still be operating.
- nraynaud 13y agoI like the idea that foreigners got a harsher sentence than the Texans in a case involving exceptionnally big tariffs against a chineese product, it reinforces my prejudice that Americans are xenophobes.
- eshvk 13y agoDo you have any evidence to suggest that the crimes that both the citizens and the non-citizens were charged with were different and yet one group got a lesser sentence?
- nraynaud 13y agoThese are not non-citizens, these are citizens from another country. I'm a bit tired of US people using this vocable too.
- rjbwork 13y agoWhile I agree with the sentiment, as an American, it becomes a bit difficult to not let the verbiage of the media and power seep into your vernacular.
- nraynaud 13y agoOrwell agrees. "foreigner" or "alien" convey the exact meaning you are looking for without implying the person comes from a barbaric non-democratic country (ironically on the day they elect their deputies, and transitively, their leader).
- randallsquared 13y agoUh, since "people not claimed by any country" is essentially an empty set, I don't see a reason to avoid using this term for it's more usual meaning of "people not a citizen of the country with the law to which we're referring".
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- jlmorton 13y ago"After U.S. beekeepers accused Chinese companies of selling their honey at artificially low prices, the government imposed import duties in 2001 that as much as tripled the price of Chinese honey. Since then, little enters from China legally." If Chinese companies were truly selling their honey at artificially low prices -- that is, dumping the honey below cost, in an attempt to destroy the competition -- then this entire scheme would not make sense. Why sell some small amount of honey at below-cost prices as part of an illicit scheme bypassing tariffs? What this truly proves is that U.S. tariffs against Chinese honey producers are not actually based on "artificially" low prices. It's just pure protectionism for an industry group, at the expense of consumers.
- sfall 13y agoif you can get a controlling interest of a market you can then dominate the market. If they can afford a loss for enough time to ensure that they control the market they can raise the price and start really making large profits
- BrandonMarc 13y agoThis. And if you happen to have a powerful government propping you up, and your government expects that as a result of your combined efforts you'll have a monopoly and put the other country's industry out of business, you can afford to operate at a loss for a long time. Look at semiconductor fab plants in Asia, compared to semiconductor fab plants in the US, circa 1980s and 1990s.
- s0rce 13y agoIt does seem that way, however, much of the honey appeared to be contaminated or adultered and passed of as higher quality.
- jlmorton 13y agoWhat's frustrating for me is that the Commerce Department never releases any data when they levy anti-dumping tariffs. U.S. tariffs against Chinese solar cells is a great recent example. Where is the evidence that Chinese companies are actually dumping, rather than simply being cheaper?
- mprovost 13y agoI always thought this was the largest food fraud, it almost brought down American Express. And they weren't forging the origin of the product but actually replacing it with water! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad_Oil_Scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad_Oil_Scandal
- nickfox 13y agoI'm not too much of a conspiracy theorist but I wonder if the Chinese are behind Colony Collapse Disorder that is devastating our bee populations... They destroy our bees and we are therefore beholden to them in yet another critical piece of infrastructure. I guess the best way to determine that is to figure out if CCD is destroying bee populations in China at the same rate as in the U.S. and Europe. Far-fetched? Cut back on the weed? Stop reading Hacker News and get back to work?
- krapp 13y agoNo, the bees just went back to their home planet. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about.
- malandrew 13y agoI was shocked at the fines involved. $180 million in tariffs avoided, but from what I read, only $3 million in fines were meted out.