Lab Owner Gets 8 Years for Disposal Scheme

A Reno man who owned and operated a Chatsworth laboratory was sentenced to eight years in a federal prison Monday for his role in a complicated scheme to transport chemical waste to Pakistan.

Tariq Ahmad, 33, was convicted in April of money laundering and violating the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. He and and co-defendant Rafat Asrar, 38, of Irvine, also were convicted of arson, conspiracy to commit arson, mail fraud and perjury. Ahmad’s brother, Mobashir Ahmad, of Reno, also was charged in connection with the arson fire.

Last month, Asrar was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Ahmad also was fined $250,000 in restitution payments and ordered to forfeit another $200,000 in property to the federal government.

All three men were arrested in March, 1992.

Federal prosecutors unraveled a complicated scheme devised by Ahmad, the owner of Shankman Laboratories, and Asrar that involved exporting toxic waste to Pakistan through another Los Angeles business.

Prosecutors contended that Ahmad’s failing business motivated him to try to save about $80,000 in disposal fees by shipping the waste abroad, where disposal would have cost him about $1,800. As part of the plan, the men set fire to the lab in an attempt to collect more than $200,000 in fire insurance about three weeks before they transported and attempted to export the waste. The November, 1989, fire was staged to look like an accident, prosecutors said.

The waste--which included arsenic, cyanide and mercury--was shipped in hundreds of improperly marked containers and placed on a ship bound for Pakistan, where prosecutors said he planned to dump it down mine shafts owned by Ahmad’s family.

But the toxic waste was seized at a Dubai port and returned to Los Angeles where it was properly disposed of by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.