Council officers in Wakefield, England, used a hidden GPS tracker to catch a man illegally dumping waste. The device was placed inside the lid of a hot tub that was to be disposed of, allowing officers to track the vehicle involved. The man, Kacper Kruk, 26, was caught in the act of dumping rubbish near household bins during a sting operation. He had been posing as a legitimate waste removal service, but was actually collecting waste and illegally dumping it, often avoiding the proper disposal costs. The investigation began after people reported paying what they believed to be a legitimate waste company, only to find their rubbish illegally dumped. Wakefield Council officers decided to test Kruk’s business by posing as customers. In April, they asked him to collect rubbish from a property in Castleford, West Yorkshire. Kruk accepted £200 for the job, and he and another man collected the waste in a white van. The hot tub was marked with a tracking device so it could be identified later. The vehicle was followed to Wakefield, where officers found the waste discarded next to regular household bins. A second sting operation was set up to catch Kruk again. This time, he quoted £400 for a waste removal job, but officers were already waiting. He was arrested on the spot. Kruk admitted he did not hold the necessary waste carrier’s licence to operate legally. He pleaded guilty to charges of depositing and transporting controlled waste without the required permits. As a result, he was ordered to pay £2,421 in total, including a £480 fine, £1,456 in court costs, and £292 in compensation to the council. Illegal waste dumping has become a growing problem in the UK, with over 10,000 suspected waste crime reports received by the Environment Agency last year. Yorkshire had the second-highest number of complaints, with 1,068 reports, just behind the West Midlands. In Bradford, a large illegal dump of several thousand tonnes of mixed household and commercial waste was discovered on Midland Road. These crimes are estimated to cost the UK economy at least £1 billion annually, with fly-tippers avoiding around £150 million in landfill taxes each year.