Contractor charged with illegally importing HFCs
7th April 2025
USA: The CEO of a Georgia-based HVAC contracting company has been charged with illegally importing 500 cylinders of HFC refrigerants from Peru.
William Randolph Hires is charged with violating the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act (AIM Act) in April 2022, by unlawfully importing R410A refrigerant on behalf of his company.
Over the next several months, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials explained to Hires’s employees that, under the AIM Act and its implementing regulations, Hires’s company could not lawfully import the HFCs into the United States because it did not have the required EPA-issued allowances.
Hires’s employees are said to have conveyed this information to Hires on several occasions.
In another email exchange between Hires and an employee, the employee is said to have informed Hires that, based on a video conference the employee had with EPA officials, shipping without the necessary allowances would violate import laws.
Nevertheless, it is alleged that Hires instructed his employees to illegally import the HFCs into the United States.
