Authorities have charged three workers from Crown Equipment Corp with stealing eight transit agency forklifts and 17 steel-cased forklift batteries and selling the items to a junk dealer.

Dependable Scrap Yard paid a total of USD7,812 to the men for forklifts and batteries with a value of approximately USD250,000, according to the district attorney.

New Bremen, Ohio-based Crown has a preventative maintenance contract with New York City Transit and, as part of the agreement, assigns technicians to the agency's warehouse in the community of Maspeth in the New York borough of Queens. The technicians are expected to provide onsite repairs and maintenance and supply estimates for workshop repairs. To facilitate repairs, Crown uses a flatbed truck and various vans to transport equipment from the warehouse to authorised locations for repairs, maintenance and replacement parts.

"The defendants are accused of trying to make a fast buck," according to district attorney Richard Brown. "In these challenging economic times, the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Agency) and the riding public can ill afford such waste and thievery." New York City Transit is a unit of MTA.

The defendants are Bruce Lesniewski, 30, of Brooklyn; Darrin Pfaff, 42, of Ronkonoma; and Kimberely Edwards, 57, of Bay Shore. Lesniewski and Pfaff worked as Crown technicians, and Edwards was a Crown flatbed truck driver. Each faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.

Lesniewski, a current Crown employee, is charged with third-degree grand larceny for the theft of two forklifts and 10 batteries for which the scrap dealer paid him USD3,097.

Pfaff and Edwards, former Crown employees, are charged with third-degree larceny and fifth-degree conspiracy for the theft of six forklifts for which the scrap dealer paid them USD3,160.

Also, Pfaff is charged with fourth-degree larceny for the theft of seven batteries which were sold for USD1,555.

An annual inventory of equipment discovered the items were missing. The prosecutor says Lesniewski and Pfaff signed invoices stating they were the rightful owners of the equipment and had authority to make the sales. Global positioning system (GPS) records for the truck that Edwards drove tracked movements of the vehicle from the warehouse to Dependable Scrap Yard in Maspeth on at least three occasions.

Crown managers co-operated with authorities during the eight-month investigation.