After a police investigation, the mystery of where fifty of the city of Pittsburgh’s metal trash cans ran off to has been solved. The culprit wasn’t who Consumerist readers suspected. The cans were installed through a partnership with Lamar Advertising, and the man arrested for trying to recycle them just happens to work for Lamar.

The Post-Gazette reports that the criminal mastermind sold the cans to a scrap yard using aliases, but handed over his actual driver’s license when employees became suspicious and asked for ID. Authorities believe that the man took containers from bus shelters that are now little-used after budget cuts.

As of Saturday, twenty of the fifty vanished cans had been recovered from scrap yards, with more to come.

Man accused of stealing city trash cans for scrap [Post-Gazette]

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