The TSA: When they're not hiding creepy notes in your luggage they're just straight-up stealing stuff. Two former TSA workers at JFK Airport pleaded guilty yesterday to grand larceny after they were caught swiping $40,000 from somebody's luggage. Coumar Persad, 44, of Jackson Heights, Queens, and Davon Webb, 31, of the Bronx will each serve six months in jail for their crime, which was perpetrated in January after Persad X-rayed a piece of baggage headed for an American Airlines flight. more ›

The Republican political operative John Haggerty was found guilty of second degree grand larceny and money laundering related to the theft of $1.1 million from Mayor Bloomberg's 2009 re-election campaign. Haggerty, who had promised to use the money for ballot security but instead bought a home, faces up to 15 years in prison. more ›

Last November authorities arrested Marque Gumbs, 33, and charged the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center worker with stealing millions of dollars worth of printer toner from the hospital and selling it on the black market to fund his lavish lifestyle. Earlier today Gumbs pleaded guilty to grand larceny. more ›

In any big city, it's really your own damn fault if you leave your valuables unattended and then they get stolen, but apparently it's been happening quite a lot in the city's Starbucks'. Thieves find easy targets at Starbucks, where customers frequently leave laptops, iPhones and other valuables at their tables while they pick up drinks or go to the bathroom. And Lt. Dan Hollywood said it's because the Bad Old Days are over! “I think it’s great people are so comfortable with New York City,” he told the Times. “But we’ve turned it around enough; maybe they’re not quite as raised up as they used to be.” Well, at least that won't last long. more ›

People, if you're going to wait hours for your iPhone 4 or iPad 2, don't flaunt them on the subway, because thieves love ripping them out of unsuspecting tecno-savvy straphangers' hands. According to the Wall Street Journal, "This year, there were 311 grand larcenies on the subway through the end of March, an 18% increase over the same period in 2010" and it's "largely driven by the increasing theft of smartphones, especially Apple's iPhone 4, said Raymond Diaz, chief of the New York City Police Department's transit bureau." Diaz told the MTA, "We've been seeing an incredible trend of young people snatching those cellphones." more ›

Internet trolls who live with their parents just got a knock to their sterling reputations, as John Egan, a 32-year-old sports fan who lived with his parents in Stuyvesant Town, is now the subject of a Manhattan DA's office investigation after scamming rich divorcees out of their fortunes. But how can you blame them for falling for a mug like this? more ›

Four former employees of Parking and Security Services Inc. were hit with 23 counts of grand larceny and identity theft after being caught falsely collecting over $95,000 in unemployment benefits. The company, which handled parking for movie shoots like Rent and The Taking of Pelham 123, used the cash to undercut competitors. However, they were discovered when those whose identities were stolen attempted to claim unemployment, and were told the money had already been collected. more ›

A brilliant burglar was busted by cops on Saturday using a stolen laptop outside the building from which he stole it. Nemesio Garica has been charged with burglary and grand larceny after admitting that he and another woman broke into the building on West 17th Street and 5th Avenue and stole three Apple laptops and two iPods on the morning of June 8th. Looks like these old Apple products are still good enough to steal! more ›

The Post reports a Greyhound bus driver "driven by love" (har) stole a $600,000 coach from Port Authority Bus Terminal to visit his girlfriend in Mount Vernon, NY. A surveillance video caught him disabling the bus's security system and driving it away last Wednesday, and he caused a terror scare when he abandoned the bus in Mount Vernon. more ›

Two men were arrested for allegedly stealing four packages—which contained over $6,000 in diamonds—from a UPS truck in the Diamond District last week. According to the Post, Pedro Montanez and Juan Rivera had "swiped nearly $20,000 worth of diamond charms and rings from two UPS trucks and a Rockefeller Center office tower" on May 10 and 19. But then last week, a cop noticed them casing the UPS truck at West 48th and 6th Avenue for 45 minutes. "After Rivera stole the packages, the officer quickly moved in." The pair were charged with grand larceny. An oldie-but-goodie: A UPS deliveryman's scheme to "steal" cellphones bought with stolen credit card numbers. more ›

Brooklyn residents Ariel and Joyce Soudry were found to be among 32 welfare cheaters in a recent crackdown, allegedly claiming benefits while holding up to $2 million in seven different bank accounts. The couple was arraigned yesterday on charges of welfare fraud and grand larceny, and appeared remorseless on their way into court—according to the Daily News, Ariel Soudry barked at the paparazzi: "Lowlifes—get a real job!" more ›

Henry Vargas has admitted to attempting to sell a building he didn't own to the running group New York Road Runners. MyFoxNY reports that Vargas pleaded guilty at the Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday to attempted grand larceny and forgery, which calls for a 5-10 year prison term. more ›

A former worker at the Tribute WTC Visitor Center, accused of stealing $40,000 from the charity between August and February, says he only did it because his family was being threatened by a loan shark. Emmanuel Reyes reportedly confessed to cops, "I never made any money off this." The Post reports, "Reyes claimed to cops that he'd borrowed $8,000 from a loan shark to pay for his mother's funeral, and feared for his family's safety after welching on $16,000 in required repayments." Reyes, who was indicted on 72 counts, including grand larceny, also said, "Another manager had showed me how to do transactions without showing a receipt. I altered the number of people coming in to make the average donation around $4." more ›

Lawyer Marc Bernstein pleaded guilty to grand larceny yesterday after stealing $2.2 million of his clients' cash. Prosecutors accused him of stealing escrow and settlement money from 16 medical malpractice and personal-injury clients between 2006 and 2009, according to Businessweek. His attorney claims Bernstein stole the money to pay off a woman who was threatening to have him disbarred for lying. The Daily News says Bernstein will be disbarred. more ›

Brooklyn’s crime statistics for the first quarter are looking none too good. Three months into the new decade felonies are way up, the Daily News reports, with almost 70 percent of Brooklyn police precincts seeing an increases in robberies, burglaries, grand larceny or auto theft of twenty percent or more. Last week Mayor Bloomberg blamed rising city crime rates on budget cuts, but Ft. Greene Councilwoman Letitia James gives an alternate explanation. more ›

An 18-year-old girl with a criminal record has been arrested for the brutal face slashing of Shantayah Lewis in Crown Heights last Friday. Carina Bernard allegedly attacked Lewis on Franklin Avenue, cutting the 17-year-old's face with a knife and stabbing her cousin, 15-year-old Shakeena Grant. A relative of both victims told the Daily News, "I'm happy they arrested her, so that she can pay for what she did." more ›

Robert "Joe" Halderman pleaded guilty yesterday for his attempt to extort $2 million from David Letterman by way of revealing Letterman's many affairs. The former CBS News producer admitted his scheme to sell a movie treatment to the talk show host "was just a thinly-veiled threat to ruin Mr. Letterman if he did not pay me a lot of money." more ›

The 54-year-old crash victim died a week later, never having had the opportunity to discover his cards were missing. Later, reports the AP, Vassell and his girlfriend Lisa Dacosta racked up a $2,000 bill at Armani Exchange, Best Buy, gas stations and other stores. Police tracked them down yesterday and charged them with grand larceny and identity theft. But Longworth and county police agree that this wasn't an isolated incident. According to the Mid Hudson News, investigators have tied Vassell's name to an October of 2009 credit card theft from a patient in the ER. more ›

When model and "wannabe-socialite" Kashmir Snowdon-Jones committed thousands of dollars worth of credit card fraud "to get back at" a friend her peers predicted she'd get out of charges using her feminine wiles and upper Manhattan fortunes. But now, charged with grand larceny and identity theft, it seems unlikely she'll be able to completely evade the consequences of her unauthorized purchases. According to the victim Jennifer Hirsch, "I told my parents that it wasn't going to end. She is going to get away with it like she always does with everyone else's money. I didn't want her to hurt anyone else as she had done to me. So that's when l said, let's go to NYPD." more ›

Days after a Brooklyn cop and a Queens politician accused the police of cooking its crime statistics, a survey of more than one hundred retired NYPD higher-ups showed that cops—who are under constant pressure to produce happy-looking stats—have routinely fabricated or manipulated their data, since the crime analysis system was put into place in 1995. And the statistics they produce are the very same that Bloomberg quotes when he says the city is safe, and getting safer every year. “Those people in the CompStat era felt enormous pressure to downgrade index crime, which determines the crime rate, and at the same time they felt less pressure to maintain the integrity of the crime statistics,” said John A. Eterno, one of the researchers and a former NYPD captain. more ›

Despite already being sentenced to one-to-three years in prison in December, Brooke Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, won't have to hit the clink just yet. A Manhattan Appellate Division judge ruled yesterday that Marshall and his co-defendant estates lawyer may stay out of prison during their appeals—which could take years. Marshall was due to start jail time starting next Tuesday. more ›

Yesterday, Justice A. Kirke Bartley sentenced Anthony Marshall to one to three years in prison, for crimes related to stealing the fortune of his mother, the late philanthropist Brooke Astor. Bartley said, "It is a paradox to me that such abundance has led to such incredible sadness. What would [Brooke Artor] say if she were here? Would she blanch at the spectacle?" more ›

Defying conventional wisdom, crime is not on the rise despite the miserable economy. Police records reveal that as the city faces a 10.3-percent unemployment rate and record numbers of homeless families, "the number of major crimes is continuing to fall this year in nearly every category," the Times reports. more ›

What is it with Saks Fifth Avenue employees? Earlier this year there was the ol' "it was for charity" excuse, which was prequeled by all of these incidents. Now another employee has been busted for siphoning around $130,000 from his employer. 23-year-old Kashien Mercer is the latest to use the store as his personal ATM; too bad he was "caught on surveillance video behind a cash register crediting some of the illegal returns to the gift card, which he put in his pocket." He was busted on November 3rd and charged with grand larceny. Listen up Saks employees, your employer is on to you, it's time to try another department store. more ›

Ah, remember the Chase bank "fraud broad," who was busted back in July for siphoning over $100K from a millionaire's private account, then blowing it on shopping, partying, and rent? We kind of did forget, then the photo brought us right back. Yesterday, 26-year-old Robin Katz pleaded guilty to grand larceny committed during her time as a financial adviser at JPMorgan Chase. So will they throw the book at the buxom embezzler? more ›

After a 19 week long trial, a jury has found Anthony Marshall guilty on one count of first-degree grand larceny related to stealing the $200 million fortune of his late mother, the philanthropist Brooke Astor. The NY Times notes, "Barring an appeal, the jury’s verdict means that [Marshall], an 85-year-old war veteran who fought at Iwo Jima, can be sentenced to anywhere from 1 to 25 years behind bars." more ›

The Nassau County DA's office says that Kevin Cohen of Roslyn charged numerous couples expensive fees—one couple says they paid Cohen $65,000— to adopt children that probably never existed. Now, with 16 couples (and counting) claiming they were duped, it's being characterized as an adoption Ponzi scheme. more ›

With their usual smorgasbord of awful, breakfast-related puns, the Post is reporting (with a "It's scam and eggs" headline) on an expensive scam that went on at the Belvedere Hotel on West 48th Street. Mary Comis, the 62-year-old controller of the hotel amassed $208,000 over three years by scamming patrons through the hotel's breakfast specials. The hotel had two specials for guests: The American Breakfast priced at $19.95, and a Continental Breakfast at $13.95. While calculating the large breakfast totals, Comis would charge the $6 difference to herself, meaning "she would have had to pull the scam roughly 34,699 times." The amounts she charged were so small that nobody caught on until recently. She's expected to serve 300 hours of community service, and is currently paying all of the money back to the Belvedere. Too bad, otherwise it would have been a parfait crime. (Your move, Post.) more ›

Just because a bank makes a mistake doesn't mean you get to benefit: A Long Island man was arrested for refusing to give up the $11,270 accidentally deposited into his Capital One account. Newsday reports that Carlos Morales' account was "mistakenly credited"—which really means "A bank teller had erroneously deposited these funds." Morales withdrew the money over a five-month period and Nassau County's Crimes Against Property Squad said even though Capitol One "contacted the defendant on numerous occasions asking the defendant to return the funds," Morales didn't respond. He is now charged with grand larceny. Also, if the ATM "accidentally" gives you more money than it should, report it and return it or you could faces charges. more ›