Former employee says pulling electrical fuses was common at Titus Mountain

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April 4, 2008

Fuses pulled to save charges, witness says

By DENISE A. RAYMO The Press Republican Fri Apr 04, 2008, 01:12 PM EDT

MALONE -- A former employee told police Zachary White showed him how to bypass National Grid power meters, using a special tool to open the electrical panel and pull fuses.

One "outage" at Titus Mountain Sports Center lasted 39 days, according to documents filed with Malone Town Court, where White was arraigned Wednesday on 10 charges, including grand larceny, theft of services, tampering and possession of stolen property.

Police investigators say White, the facility's general manager, obtained "multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars" in free electricity and that a further review of records could reveal alleged thefts into the millions of dollars.

White, 43, is free on $15,000 cash bail.

A special prosecutor has been requested to take over the case because there is a conflict of interest with the Franklin County District Attorney's Office.

If he is convicted of the most serious charge, White could spend 15 years in state prison in what some are calling the largest theft-of-services case in National Grid history.

The company's Revenue Protection Unit found at least 30 instances between Feb. 22, 2005, and March 15 of this year where, it says, power was intentionally switched off at the ski resort's pump houses and ski lifts.

Pulling the fuses prevents the meter from registering power usage.

The power was off from as little as a few minutes to several weeks at a time, the documents state.

special tool

Former Titus employee Stewart P. Sage Jr. of Malone told State Police investigators he worked at the ski center for 16 years and "observed illegal behavior regarding use of electricity."

He said that, four years ago, White showed him how to pull the cover off the panel boxes at each of the four pump houses and use a plastic set of pliers to remove the three fuses inside.

"He told me he got the tool from an employee at Niagara Mohawk," Sage told police.

The tool was stowed in White's desk, along with extra power-company seals that are placed on an electrical box to prove it has not been tampered with since its last meter reading.

"During my employment, I was instructed by Zack White to pull fuses from meter boxes," Sage said in his statement to investigators. "I did what Zack said or else I wouldn't have had a job.

"I am unsure why Zack would pull the fuses. The only thing I can think was that he was trying to make himself look good to corporate headquarters in Minnesota."

WORKER FIRED

Sage said he was fired in November 2007 after asking White for a raise for himself and other workers.

He also told investigators White had him discharge the main ski lodge's leach field into a culvert near the U.S. Ski Patrol building in the spring of 2006.

Sage said that for the past four years, White had routinely pulled the fuses in the middle of November before the meters were read, when the facility was testing its snowmaking and ski-lift equipment.

And, for the past three years, when the ski resort has hosted a pond-skimming event, where contestants try to ski across a man-made pond without falling in the water, White would turn the power off, Sage said.

This year's event was scheduled for March 15, so, Sage said, he went to National Grid on March 13 and told what he knew about the alleged tampering and the upcoming pond-skimming event.

INSPECTORS ON SITE

A pair of National Grid field inspectors arrived at Titus Mountain on March 15 and told police investigators they saw the unlocked current-transformer cabinet with its cover removed, as well as the three dislodged fuses and the special tool.

While they waited for State Police to arrive, another Titus Mountain employee, Brian Beach, told them that, each year when snowmaking starts and temperatures hover below 30 degrees, the 30 pieces of snowmaking equipment work 24 hours a day; that's for November, December and sometimes into January.

One inspector, Peter Allen, said White showed up at the pump house and admitted he had pulled the fuses that day but said it was the only time he knew of that they had been removed.

Later, Allen said, White told him that National Grid employees would sometimes help him pull the fuses as a favor and that he didn't know there was anything wrong with that.

DOCUMENTATION

Allen included a multiple-page grid showing power outages and restarts for the Titus Mountain electricity accounts, most of them involving the power supply to Chair Lift 1 and 2.

For example, the paperwork shows power was "out" continuously for five days from 1:25 p.m. on Aug. 10, 2005, until 1:24 p.m. on Aug. 15 and another four days and two hours from Sept. 29 to Oct. 3 that year.

National Grid said power was shown off for 11 days and 21 hours between Oct. 5 and Oct. 17, 2005, for 15 days between Aug. 14 and Aug. 29, 2006, and for 39 days between Sept. 8 and Oct. 17, 2006.

According to the paperwork, the most elaborate outages were between July 3 at 1 p.m. and July 24 at 7:55 a.m. when the fuses were allegedly pulled for several days, then replaced, then pulled again for another long period.

The first outage lasted from 1 p.m. on July 3 to 10:30 a.m. on July 10. But at 5:24 p.m. the same day, power was taken offline again, this time until it was restored at 7:49 a.m. July 17, the document states.

The fuses were pulled again at 10:17 a.m. that day, and free power was allegedly obtained until July 23 at 1:14 p.m., when it was switched back on.

Four hours later, the power was switched off again and not restored until 7:55 a.m. on July 24.

"This estimate is conservative," Allen said of the data. "An actual bill amount calculated for these data is likely to be higher due to billing factors such as demand and bill rates in effect at the time of usage."

draymo@pressrepublican.com