The owner of an asbestos removal business in Bothwell, Washington, has been sentenced to jail time and ordered to pay fines for posing as a licensed asbestos provider and exposing clients to asbestos.
According to Attorney General Ferguson, Derrick Boss of Above and Beyond Asbestos Removal has been sentenced to 105 days in prison and more than $13,000 in restitution to those affected by his environmental crimes.
Records that were shown in court note that Boss had been operating as an asbestos removal operator without a license for years and had forged the signature of his former partner on asbestos abatement certification documents. He exposed his workers, including his own son, to asbestos due to a lack of personal protective equipment.
One man who contacted Boss’s company paid more than $4,000 in advance for an asbestos removal service. Health and safety inspectors who attended the site found that Boss’s son was the only person working on the site at the time, and he was uncertified and had no respiratory or personal protective equipment.
In a second instance, Boss and his son had left a client’s property without finishing the asbestos removal service, leaving close to 45 cubic litres of asbestos-contaminated debris on the floor of the site, and had to pay another provider to finish the service when Boss refused to refund the $4,500 fee.
According to the AG’s office, Boss launched the business in 2016 with his then-girlfriend, who left two years later. In 2018, he was decertified. Since the decertification, he forged her signature on certification documents, despite her repeatedly asking him to remove her from company licenses and records.
Currently, Boss has more than half a million dollars in fines from the health and safety inspector.
“This contractor preyed upon unsuspecting homeowners, and quickly scheduled jobs to avoid detection,” said Craig Blackwood, L&I’s assistant director of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health. “He was playing with peoples’ health and their bank accounts.”
In February of this year, the Attorney-General’s Environmental Protection Division filed criminal charges against Boss, and in June he pleaded guilty to two felonies, forgery and second-degree theft, and four gross misdemeanours, two violations of the Washington Clean Air Act and two counts of contracting without a license.
“I formed an Environmental Protection Division to bring additional prosecutorial resources to environmental crimes,” said Ferguson. “My legal team is working to hold polluters accountable when they expose Washingtonians to dangerous and toxic substances in pursuit of profit.”