Four more plastics executives have received jail terms and fines for their parts in conspiring to fix prices of injection molded dinnerware. U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno sentenced all four men last month in Philadelphia.
Clement Izzi, president of Comet Products Inc. of Chelmsford, Mass., received a 21-month jail term and a $90,000 fine for fixing plastic dinnerware prices, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, said Scott Hammond, lead prosecutor for the Justice Department.
Russell Greer, vice president of subsidiary Comet California Cutlery Inc., got five months in jail, five months in a halfway house and a $20,000 fine for his part in the same offense, Hammond said in a recent telephone interview from Washington.
Robert Westbrook, former president of Plastics Inc. of St. Paul, Minn., will serve 15 months in prison and pay $75,000 for his roles in conspiring to fix prices and to commit wire fraud.
Warren White, a former vice president at Plastics Inc., received four months in prison, four months in a halfway house and a $10,000 fine for wire fraud. The wire fraud charges involved using a telephone in a scheme to raise the prices of plastics dinnerware sold to customer Delta Air Lines Inc., based in Atlanta.
In all, seven executives from three firms have been sentenced since February for the price-fixing conspiracy, which took place between December 1991 and December 1992, Hammond said. Charges were filed June 8, 1994.
Polar Plastics Manufacturing Inc. of Allentown, Pa., also was charged in June with conspiring to fix prices of disposable plastic cutlery. That investigation, which involves at least one other company, still is pending, Hammond said, but he would not comment on the case.
