QUEENS — A JFK Airport baggage handler was arrested Wednesday after confessing to stealing a box of luxury watches worth nearly $133,000 from his job and hiding them under the bed of his Queens home, officials said.
Leslie Sharbo, 48, who was born in Trinidad and has a family in Queens, swiped into a secure British Airways baggage room in Terminal Seven of the airport on Nov. 19 and stole a sealed box containing six luxury timepieces by Linde Werdelin heading to a guest at the Gramercy Park Hotel in Manhattan, Port Authority Police officials said.
The box included the $32,501 rose gold Spidospeed, a $26,592 gold Spidolite, a $20,682 carbon green Spidospeed, and three other $17,727 Oktopus Moonlite and Spidospeed models.
Police searched Sharbo's Jamaica home on Wednesday and found a bag with two boxes under his bed, PAPD officials said. Investigators only recovered five watches, they said, adding the whereabouts of the sixth watch was not immediately known.
Sharbo's wife, Rawtie Sharbo, 46, said she knew something was wrong on Wednesday when he never showed up to sign the lease on a new apartment they had found.
"I’d been calling him and he wasn’t answering. I called his work and nothing. My son had been calling. I knew something was wrong," she said.
Sharbo confessed to taking the watches and was arrested on charges of grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, PAPD officials said. He was still awaiting arraignment Thursday afternoon, prosecutors said.
His wife said she doesn't believe Sharbo meant to steal the watches, adding that he has no criminal past and no money problems.
Sharbo was a bag handler for British Airways for 15 years until the company downsized eight months ago. He then started a job with Ground Services International, which is contracted with the airline, his wife and officials said. The company did not immediately return a request for comment.
"This is the first time that this ever happened," Sharbo's wife said.
