LAKELAND, FL (WFLA) – You may have seen them, the donation boxes set up near businesses for people to drop off unwanted clothes and other items. But, in one Polk County community, residents are fed up with a donation site that has turned into a donation dump! The boxes are located in a vacant lot along U.S. Highway 98 North.

Donations and trash have been piling up for months. 8 On Your Side discovered there is much more to this shady business.

“It sits out here in the rain, it’s no good to anybody,” said Joe Borski, who is fed up with cleaning up the trash that blows into his yard. “It smells. You should have smelled it a couple weeks ago. It’s calmed down a lot.”

Borski has tried for weeks to get answers. “I’ve called this company, left several messages. No response. I called code enforcement last week, they said they would send an officer out here, no response.”

That is until 8 On your side got involved. We found out these bins aren’t legal. Sherry Sheffield, a Code Investigation Supervisor tells us they’re popping up all over Polk County. “There’s no way to track them down. The only way to track it down is to catch them in the act, delivering a bin, and that just hasn’t happened yet,” Sheffield said.

That may be why a man in a white box truck, who was just about to load up the items, took off when he saw a News Channel 8 vehicle. We called the number on the box, but it went right to a voicemail. When we typed in the website listed we were warned that the site contains malware that can install dangerous viruses on your computer.

The worst part, these items were likely never going to be donated. We asked why this could be done.

“I don’t know. We speculate they are using the goods that are in these bins and reselling them somewhere,” said Sheffield.

As for the site in question, it is a vacant private lot. Sheffield said they would be contacting the property owner, who probably wasn’t aware the bins were set up. They will be given two to three weeks to remove them.

“They have to deal with it. Unfortunately they are the victim,” she said.