Five massive trucks missing as asbestos-dumper hit with proceeds of crime claims

Prosecutors want to seize the five massive trucks used by a notorious trucking boss Fayed Afram to illegally dump tonnes of asbestos – but they can’t find them, or some of the waste.

Prosecutors want to seize the five massive Freightliner trucks used by notorious trucking boss Fayed Afram to illegally dump tonnes of asbestos – but they can’t find them, a court has been told.

Afram, aka Fred Fram and Faid Fram, has been fined $460,000 for collecting 17,600 tonnes of asbestos contaminated waste from a Green Square development site and dumping it on rural properties pretending it was clean waste.

He had also pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $4.23 million to get rid of the 17,600 tonnes of asbestos contaminated waste through his company SSADCO Contractors.

Now the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is using proceeds of crime laws to claw back as much as it can but the Supreme Court was told on Monday that the five Freighliners together with a huge Kembla dog trailer and a Mercedes Benz and Iveco truck are all missing along with a Range Rover and two Toyota HiLux utes.

The vehicles are all currently unregistered and “of unknown location”, the court was told.

Strike Force Dothan was established to investigate anomalies recorded in the removal and disposal of waste, as part of the Green Square Town Centre development. Picture: NSW Police

Prosecutors want them forfeited to the State of NSW and for Afram to reveal where the vehicles are.

“It is hard to hide one of these trucks never mind five,” a source said.

Of the $4.23 million, $2.39 million was supposed to be paid to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a waste levy but the waste was instead dumped as road fill on a semi rural property at Kulnurra and a property at Horsley Park. Some of the waste is still missing.

Afram’s lawyer Andrew Stewart argued in the Supreme Court on Monday that Afram could not properly defend the case because prosecutors had bungled the way they filed for proceeds of crime which should have been done within six months of his conviction in June 2021.

Prosecutor Fiona Gray said there were banking records and other records including false weighbridge declarations so the case did not rely on recollections.

During a search on a rural Kemps Creek property police seized documents, computers and a quad dog trailer, shortly before Fayed Afram was charged. Picture: NSW Police

Justice Christine Adamson ruled against Afram and said that it was in the interests of justice that the case should go ahead. She granted leave to the DPP to file the correct documents.

Afram was placed on a two-year intensive corrections order in the District Court last year after pleading guilty to fraud that involved 600 counterfeit waste disposal dockets, more than 50 different trucks and all of the associated documents to cart the tonnes of waste across 600 individual truck movements.

In April this year he was fined $460,000 in the Land and Environment Court which was told he was a single father-of-four living on social security payments including carer’s payments of $1361.10 a fortnight.