Anne Arundel Co. Man Who Illegally Dumped 250K Scrap Tires Sentenced

BALTIMORE, MD — An Anne Arundel County man who illegally dumped and abandoned more than 250,000 scrap tires at a site in Allegany County will serve time in jail, a judge ordered this week.

Michel Osei, 48, of Hanover, was sentenced after pleading guilty in October to 17 environmental crimes, including one count of unlawful disposal for gain, eight counts of operating a scrap tire facility without a license and eight counts of improper handling of waste, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said Wednesday.

An Allegany County Circuit Court judge ordered Osei to 5 years in prison, with all but 45 days suspended. He will also serve five years of probation and pay restitution of $250,000 to the Allegany County Commissioners.

According to court documents, Osei approached the Allegany County Office of Economic Development in June 2021 with a proposal to open a scrap tire recycling facility in the county.

The investigation revealed that in June of 2021, Osei approached the Allegany County Office of
Economic Development with a proposal to operate a scrap tire recycling facility in the county.
Osei claimed the facility would eventually employ up to 50 people and already had millions of
dollars in contracts to send the recycled tires overseas.

The county offered Osei a land lease for industrial ground bordering the Potomac River at 23302 Westernport Road SW in Allegany County. On July 19, 2021, Osei began operations at the facility.

According to court documents, Osei and his employees would go on to collect more than 100,000 scrap tires from various locations in West Virginia. The tires were taken to the facility in Westernport. Few, if any, tires were ever removed, prosecutors said.

State environmental inspectors became aware of the operation in October 2021. Inspectors found about 10,000 to 15,000 scrap tires at the facility. The property had no permits and the tires were stored outside and uncovered in piles that inspectors said posed a significant fire hazard.

Between the fall of 2021 and the spring of 2022, the Maryland Department of the Environment and the Office of the State Fire Marshal ordered Osei to stop operations on multiple occasions. Osei ultimately abandoned the site in September 2022, leaving behind more than 250,000 scrap tires strewn across the property and packed into tractor-trailer containers.

Allegany County has since started to clean up the site, prosecutors said.