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SACRAMENTO–

At Capital City Recycling in Sacramento they say it’s not hard to run a clean shop and not hard to spot a scammer.

“If you’re bringing in that kind of amount it’s just not legit so we know, we know,” said Joey Mello, of Capitol City Recycling.

For one family we spoke to there, it took about a month to save up enough bottles and cans for $50 bucks back. Compare that to the $300,000 CalRecycle says was trucked in by this recycling ring.

CalRecycle says two members of the ring were busted red-handed with rented trucks full of cans.

Gerardo Gomez-Vasquez and Luis Aguirre-Alacorn admitted to buying the bottles and cans in Nevada and trucking them to California. One look and you could tell they’ve already been processed.

Inspectors are watching so the centers doing it right can only increase their business, while those who don’t get shut down.

“In this particular case we observe some suspicious activity at various centers and alert the Department of Justice, who works with us to prosecute criminal cases,” said Mark Oldfield, spokesman for CalRecycle.