A 36-year-old Billings man who pleaded guilty to defrauding businesses of scrap metal payments was sentenced Wednesday to four years in federal prison, three years of supervised release and a $50,000 fine, according to a news release from Acting U.S. Attorney Mark Steger Smith.
Chad Miller Costello pleaded guilty in May 2025 to one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering, and one count of filing a false tax return.
Federal prosecutors argued Costello ran a scrap-metal business under multiple names from 2018 to 2023 that stole money from customers.
Costello would promise to buy scrap metal at premium prices, pick up the material, then sell to recyclers. Prosecutors stated that he would only pay a portion of the amount owed or nothing to the business, then eventually cut off communications with them. He launched new schemes under new business names, according to prosecutors.
In October 2022, Costello paid $150,000 in an initial installment for scrap metal that he took from a company in Coolidge, Arizona. Costello then sold the material to a recycler for more than $1 million and did not pay the balance he owed to the seller. Costello also filed his taxes in 2020, falsifying the documents and claiming an annual income significantly smaller than what he was making from his sales of scrap metal, according to prosecutors.
