Eight men were charged Wednesday, including seven of the Cinnaminson Sewerage Authority's 15 workers. One of seven employees was charged but had not been arrested by late afternoon.
"This really is a rather brazen and insane effort to secure property of the township," said Robert Bernardi, the Burlington County prosecutor.
Bernardi said that in December, an audit showed that the authority in the suburb near Philadelphia was missing a piece of earth-moving equipment.
He said police tracked it down on the Scot Run, Pa., property of Joseph L. Lehman Jr., a father of two sewage authority workers. Lehman was the only non-employee charged. Authorities said the machine was fraudulently reported as broken to the sewerage authority.
That led to a broader investigation, Bernardi said.
He said some of the men had a private business on the side working as sewer contractors for a Mount Laurel hotel. He said they performed the work on authority time and used authority vehicles and parts for it.
Authority superintendent Paul Phillips is accused of overseeing that alleged scheme.
He and the other employees were being held in the Burlington County Jail late Wednesday afternoon. It was unclear whether the defendants had hired attorneys.
Phillips and some of the others are also charged with working with a sales manager at Camden-based Contractor Services to order $44,000 worth of products for their personal use - GPS systems, stereos, vacuum cleaners, all-terrain vehicle tires and George Foreman grills among them - and bill the authority.
The bills, he said, appeared to be for the sorts of things a sewerage authority would need, such was pumps.
No one from the company has been charged, though the investigation is continuing. Bernardi said the company is legitimate.
The workers charged face charges including theft, conspiracy to commit theft and corruption of public resources. He said it's likely the higher charge of official misconduct will be added.
The employees were all suspended without pay weeks ago by the sewerage authority.
Though authorities in New Jersey are often seen as places where corruption can thrive because they have lax oversight, Bernardi commended the board that oversees the Cinnaminson agency for its help in cracking the case.
"The Authority will not tolerate the type of activities identified today, and has ordered the immediate implementation of additional administrative and operational initiatives to ensure accountability, checks and balances, and ethical behavior in all authority activities," the five-member board said in a statement.
