Eastern Railroad Discussion > Cleveland Man Sentenced for Rail Sabotage

 A Cleveland man has been sentenced to two years in a federal prison and received three years of probation in connection with a 2023 plot to allegedly attempt to derail trains.
Joseph Findley, 43, pleaded guilty to four counts of violence against railroad carriers.
He was arrested in October 2023 after allegedly wedging spikes into switches or other sections of track on five occasions over a three-month period.
Findley was ordered by a federal judge to pay $10,544 to CSX for damage caused to the tracks and the cost of the investigation. The CSX tracks involved are also used by Amtrak.
No motive for the action was determined, but Findley’s attorney said he was suffering from “massive alcohol addiction” at the time. FBI agents found tens of thousands of empty beer cans in his home. Findley apologized during the hearing and said he would “pay back every dime.” From the akronrrblog

Tens of thousands of empty beer cans in his home??!?

And his liver is still functioning??????

Tens of thousands?! lol!! You would have to drink over a 24 pack a day 7 days a week for an entire year straight just to get anywhere near ten thousand. Can't make this stuff up!

Posted from Android

I have known people who drink that much and more in their short lives...  One chap I knew arranged for a beer distributor to send a truck by his house weekly for beer delivery.  And I had a friend in college that regularly went through three cases of beer in a weekend.  Saving all those cans...or bottles...and they add up pretty fast.  Sad to see that art f thing, but it's not all that uncommon.

In Lisbon, OH, home of the Federal Prison, he can probably buy drugs, but not beer.............

In Michigan, there would be a $.10 deposit on every can. 10,000 cans equals $1,000.

DLM Wrote:
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> In Michigan, there would be a $.10 deposit on
> every can. 10,000 cans equals $1,000.

Remembering that Seinfeld episode...

When I was a student at The Ohio State University, I used to collect alumunum cans at the home football weekends to obtain a little extra money.  At one Michigan game visiting Michigan fans would buy bags of cans I had collected, sometimes for considerably more in cash than they were worth at the recycling yard, to take back home and turn them in there.  Michigan deposit cans are clearly marked as such; I don't know how they would get away with it.

zars Wrote:
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> When I was a student at The Ohio State University,
> I used to collect alumunum cans at the home
> football weekends to obtain a little extra
> money.  At one Michigan game visiting Michigan
> fans would buy bags of cans I had collected,
> sometimes for considerably more in cash than they
> were worth at the recycling yard, to take back
> home and turn them in there.  Michigan deposit
> cans are clearly marked as such; I don't know how
> they would get away with it.

Michigan has a law against it that includes decent penalties against anyone doing that in large scale, and every so often it gets enforced against someone.

There are plenty of beverage cans and bottles sold in Ohio that have Michigan deposit markings on them, though I might have thought that would be less of an issue around Columbus than it is in Toledo. I guess the cost of wholesaling distinct product on each side of the state line has been deemed not worth the trouble. I do occasionally find non-deposit cans in Michigan that clearly have been carried north from Ohio after being bought (without deposit) in Ohio, then tossed as litter.

SNY1337 Wrote:
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> Tens of thousands?! lol!! You would have to drink
> over a 24 pack a day 7 days a week for an entire
> year straight just to get anywhere near ten
> thousand. Can't make this stuff up!
>
> Posted from Android

Had a close friend who drank a case of beer and smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day...for at least the 15 years I knew him before he passed
away at the ripe old age of 72.

We both worked at and retired from the same Union-represented factory, which included many individuals with the same life-shortening habits.
Factory work, regardless of the pay offered, does not tend to attract a lot of well-educated, health-conscious persons so there were
plenty of people I knew who "clocked-out" at an early age.