Rochester Man Sentenced for Stealing Interstate Shipment from Railcar

ROCHESTER, NY—U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Anthony J. Russell, 39, of Rochester, New York, who was convicted following a jury trial of conspiracy to steal an interstate shipment and theft of an interstate shipment, was sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay $4,669.26 in restitution by U.S. District Judge Charles J. Siragusa.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett A. Harvey, who handled the case, stated that on June 30, 2009, Russell, along with co-conspirators Richard E. Riedman, Anthony Toscano, and Timothy Stone, stole more than 17 gross tons of a high-grade scrap steel from a railcar at a CSXT rail yard in Batavia, New York. Russell and his co-conspirators used a logging truck to remove the scrap steel from the railcar, wore dark clothing, used lookouts to avoid detection by law enforcement authorities and pedestrians, and used two-way radios to communicate with each other during the theft. The defendant and his co-conspirators were caught by members of the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office in the logging truck and a pick-up truck as they left the scene of the theft in the early morning hours of June 30, 2009.

The bales were in the process of being shipped to a steel mill in Pennsylvania when Russell and his co-conspirators stole them. The defendant along with Riedman, Toscano, and Stone were convicted after a two-week jury trial before Judge Siragusa in September 2012.

Judge Siragusa previously sentenced Toscano and Stone to 18 months and 12 months in prison respectively. Riedman is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Siragusa on September 16, 2013.

The sentencing is the culmination of an investigation on the part of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Acting Special Agent in Charge Richard M. Frankel, and the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office, under the direction of Sheriff Gary Maha.