Camera Thieves Get the Red Light
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If you blew through this one, chances are there was no camera there to catch you do it.
If you’ve busted through a red light in the last 48 hours, there’s a 20 percent chance you won’t get ticketed, thanks to junkies Anthony Cintorrino and Tara LaBurt.
The two heroin-hungry pair stole 22 red-light cameras from their street poles and sold them to a camera resale shop for $300 a pop. The Nikon cameras cashed in $80,000 in total, money used for their drug fund.
Cintorrino, 45, has a long record of using illicit drugs and psychiatric problems. He was held in lieu of an $8,000 bond. LaBurt, 25, has had drug and drunken driving problems in the past. She recently met Cintorrino after leaving rehab.
Her brother, Michael LaBurt, explains that she is a “product of a trust-fund culture,” as she is the granddaughter of a founder of UPS. The family has recently faced money problems.
The two mavericks were spotted early on in their red-light mission. An employee at a hardware store on Coney Island claims to have seen them taking something from the camera box. When questioned, Cintorrino said he worked for Mulvihill ICS, a Staten Island company that maintains the cameras for the city Department of Transportation -- a fact that used to be true.
However, the thieving pair was caught within two days. The cops arrested them after finding 13 of the missing cameras. “We visit each site daily, so we knew within a day when they were missing,” a DOT spokesman told the New York Post.
This is not LaBurt’s first arrest; she was cuffed for drunken driving.
