North Andover Woman Accused of Putting Workers and Their Families At Risk

The Boston Globe reports that a North Andover resident is now one of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) most wanted fugitives. Albania Deleon, 39, ran the largest asbestos removal training school in New England from 2001 to 2007. However, federal officials discovered that Deleon was granting fraudulent certificates stating the bearer had training to safely asbestos.

Officials estimates that Deleon and her assistants gave fraudulent certificates to over 2,500 works, who then removed asbestos from hundreds of schools, churches, homes, libraries, and hospitals across New England through Deleon’s staffing agency, Metheun Abatement Staffing.

Because these workers did not receive proper safety training, they have unwittingly exposed themselves to hazardous conditions that could lead to lung cancer and death decades into the future. Many of them did not even know how to wear a respirator and may have exposed their family to the hazardous fibers by unknowingly bringing them home.

Delean sawed off her ankle monitor and fled in March. Law enforcement officials are searching for Deleaon across three countries, vowing to catch her for putting so many workers at risk.

She ‘harmed so many. And we will catch her’, Boston Globe, May 17, 2009
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