“Not long after Trutanich’s loss, Advanced Cleanup sued BP America, alleging that it had only paid a small fraction of the $4 million it said it was owed, according to court documents filed in 2014. Both companies eventually settled two years later.
This was the high point for Garcia. After considerable testing and evaluation, the California Air Resources Board had approved his application to run the emissions control barge in October 2015, and it began operating in Long Beach Harbor shortly after that.
Garcia called the barge a “game-changer in the fields of emission control and air quality” that could remove thousands of tons of pollutants every year, in a news release at the time. Port officials agreed.
“It’s really important to have it available to vessels in the Port of Long Beach,” said Matt Arms, the port’s environmental planning director.
Good publicity started rolling in soon after the barge began operations. The Los Angeles Business Journal profiled him. Grist magazine even reported that Garcia envisioned operating a fleet of 20 barges.
“We’ve come to think of the tech world’s heroes as well-educated, creative people who dream of saving our world with their ideas,” Grist reported on March 24, 2016. “Ruben Garcia’s story is nothing like that. Born in Mexico, he grew up as an undocumented farmworker, picking onions when he was just 5 years old, and never attended college. But Garcia’s remarkable innovations are helping to clean up the shipping industry.”
But at the same time, Garcia had stopped paying some bills, according to court records (though they aren’t specific on why he stopped). Just a year after his barge started operations in Long Beach, Judge Christina Snyder attached two earlier creditors of Advanced to the BP America case and ordered Garcia to pay them. But when Advanced deposited a check for its portion of the settlement, it bounced, according to court documents.
Snyder then found Advanced in contempt and ordered it to pay a $250 fine for each day they were out of compliance with her 2017 order to pay the two creditors.
According to Carmen Batriz, one of the creditors, the company has never paid those fines. “Ruben Garcia has not appeared and has not paid any portion of the fine ordered by the court,” she said in a July 13 email. “As of this date, the accumulated amount of the court-ordered fine would be $310,500.00.”
As for the actual settlement with her, Batriz said that the company “paid $18,944 and failed to pay the balance of the settlement amount of $33,000.”
A June 2021 court filing from Garcia’s attorney lists more than 50 creditors, including investors, various tax collectors, attorneys and utilities. (One of the investors suing Garcia in bankruptcy court is Pacific6 Environmental LLC, which is a subsidiary of Pacific6, owner of Pacific Community Media, the parent company of the Long Beach Post).
A bankruptcy court filing in March from Signal Hill-based GOLO Inc. estimated “well in excess of $70 million” in unpaid creditor claims for Garcia’s companies over the last two decades. The documents paint Garcia’s businesses as something akin to a Ponzi scheme.”
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