reported that the company had been cited twice in recent weeks <\/a>for illegal burning. The fire department said that it was reviewing the property’s inspection history and code enforcement violations as part of its arson investigation.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Officials have not said whether they think the fire was intentional or whether the company had been told to mitigate fire risks. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality didn’t respond to questions about whether the property was registered as a scrap tire storage site.<\/p>\n
Public records reviewed by the Chronicle show the property and its owners have been mired in legal problems for years over accusations of unpaid debt and fraud.<\/p>\n
Claims about unpaid debts<\/p>\n
The property where the fire ignited is a roughly 14.4-acre commercial tract in the Pecan Park neighborhood, south of downtown Houston. The fire was on the western edge of the land, near a line of trees that separates the commercial site from a residential neighborhood. Historical aerial photos from Google Earth appear to show tires being stored at the recycling center starting in 2021.<\/p>\n
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The property has been owned by Kellog Properties Inc. since 2018, according to Harris Central Appraisal District records. The appraisal district valued the property at about $5.6 million for 2026.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Comerica Bank sued Kellog Properties and its president, Wajahat “Ray” Khan, in Harris County and accused the company of defaulting on a $2.6 million loan. That lawsuit identified Kellog by other business names, including Elephant Recycling, Gulf Coast Scrap and Superior Scrap and Demolition.<\/p>\n
In 2022, a judge granted Comerica a default judgment and awarded the bank more than $3 million. It’s unclear whether the amount was ever paid.<\/p>\n
That was not the only legal case tied to the property, however.<\/p>\n
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Public records reviewed by the Chronicle tie Mihir Patel, a North Texas recycling executive, to the current operator at the site, Mammoth Metal Recycling. Records don’t show that Patel holds title to the land, but\u00a0Texas Secretary of State records connect Patel and Khan together through another company, Elephant Industries Inc.<\/p>\n
Khan is listed as Elephant Industries’ president and Patel as its director and manager. Elephant Industries shares the 700 Kellogg address with Mammoth Metal Recycling.<\/p>\n
Like Kellog Properties, Mammoth Metal Recycling has faced accusations of unpaid debts.<\/p>\n
The city of Houston, Houston ISD and Houston Community College sued Mammoth in 2024 to collect unpaid taxes on the tract. A judge signed a default judgment in May 2025 awarding the taxing authorities delinquent taxes, penalties, interest and costs and ordering the property sold. Despite that order, there’s no indication that the property has changed hands.<\/p>\n
In both financial disputes, the companies did little to respond to the allegations against them. Patel and Mammoth never responded to the taxing entities’ claims and never named a defense attorney to represent them in court. In the 2021 bank dispute, Khan initially hired a defense attorney.<\/p>\n
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The attorney, John Wesley Wauson, quit because of “difficulties in communication and conflicts and discord” with Khan, according to court records.<\/p>\n
Khan never hired another lawyer.<\/p>\n
PPP fraud<\/p>\n
Between the two civil cases, Patel and Khan became targets of a federal criminal investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\nIn 2023, the men were among 14 people named in a North Texas federal case alleging they fraudulently received more than $53 million in loan proceeds from the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program and numerous financial institutions.<\/p>\n
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The men were accused of submitting inflated payroll expenses to the government in order to obtain more than $2 million in PPP funds. Some of the men also allegedly worked together to submit fraudulent information to a bank in order to receive a $46 million loan, according to court records.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors identified Patel as the chief financial officer of Sunshine Recycling and owner of several affiliated recycling businesses, including Mammoth Group, R.A. Industries and L.K. Industries. Khan is identified as the president and owner of Gulf Coast Scrap.<\/p>\n
Both Patel and Khan have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Neither had been sentenced as of Tuesday. Both face possible sentences of up to 30 years in prison and fines of up to $1 million.<\/p>\n
Lawyers representing Patel and Khan could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston firefighters respond near a residential neighborhood as thick black smoke rises from a large tire fire near…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-347598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}