Two Baltimore men were sentenced to prison for their alleged roles in a scheme to steal nickel briquettes passing through the Port of Baltimore and attempt to sell them for scrap metal, the U.S. Attorney for Maryland announced Wednesday.
Gregg Lee Purbaugh, 53, was sentenced to 18 months in prison while his business partner, Kenneth Trainum, 46, was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Both were also ordered to pay restitution of $1 million.
Purbaugh and Trainum, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to transport stolen nickel, began removing nickel that belonged to an international mining company from their Bear Creek warehouse in 2006. The men set aside the nickel and later sold 80,000 pounds of it, worth $1 million, to a Pittsburgh scrap metal company. They were caught by Homeland Security agents in 2011 removing unmarked sacks of nickel briquettes from a shipping container next to their Bear Creek warehouse and loading them in a truck.