Fly-tipper caught in sting operation involving GPS tracker hidden inside hot tub | News UK

A fly-tipper was caught in the act dumping waste by a secret GPS tracker hidden in a discarded hot tub.

Kacper Kruk was fined almost £2,500 after being tracked discarding waste next to household bins by council officers in a sting operation.

The 26-year-old was investigated by Wakefield Council after people reported paying what they believed to be a legitimate waste company, only for Kruk to illegally dump their rubbish.

Kirklees Magistrates’ Court heard that officers deliberately set up Kruk by posing as a customer and asking him to pick up rubbish from a property in Castleford, West Yorkshire in April.

Investigators hid a tracking device in the lid of a hot tub to be disposed, marked so it could later be identified.

Kruk accepted £200 for the job after he and another man collected the waste in a white van, providing officers with his business card before driving off with the hot tub.

His vehicle was tracked to Wakefield where he was found to have disposed of the rubbish next to standard household wheelie bins.

A second sting operation saw Kruk quote £400 for another waste removal, only to be apprehended by officers when he arrived.

Kruk admitted he did not have a waste carrier’s licence needed to carry out his work.

He leaded guilty to charges of depositing controlled waste without an environmental permit and transporting controlled waste without a licence.

The rogue businessman was ordered to pay a total of £2,421, including a £480 fine, £1,456 court costs and £292 compensation to the council.

Illegal waste dumping has become a organised criminal business across the UK, with more than 10,000 reports of suspected waste crime received by the Environment Agency last year.

Yorkshire received the second largest number of complaints at 1,068 suspected crimes reported, surpassed only to the West Midlands on 1,542 reports.

Among high profile cases in the county was a huge illegal dump of several thousand tonnes of mixed household and commercial waste on a piece of land on Midland Road in Bradford.

Waste crimes are thought to cost at least £1billion to the UK economy each year, with some £150million in landfill tax avoided by fly-tippers annually.

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