Three Copper Mountain Ski Resort employees have been arrested for stealing more than $6,400 worth of US Ski Team gear, the Associated Press reports. The US Ski Team is training at the newly opened Copper Mountain Olympic training center.
According to Summit Daily, William Lancaster, 23, Ryan Lundquist, 23, and James Callahan, 25 were all charged with class four felony theft that could land them all in prison for up to six years with as much as $500,000 in fines. Lancaster and Lundquist admitted to stealing jackets, pairs of gloves, Under Armor brand clothing from the Ski Team conference room while Callahan was the lookout.
The US Ski Team said that the gear was brand new, but when the stolen gear was recovered it was mostly unusable -- the theives had tried to remove US Ski Team logos from the gear and nearly destroyed it in the process, 7News reports.
Most of the stolen items were found in Lancaster's apartment and several other pieces of stolen gear were found in a nearby Dumpster, 9News reports.
Lundquist, one of the three arrested, says on his Facebook page that he's a "Lifty," a lift operator, at Copper Mountain resort and has been since November of 2010. He also states that he's "living the life that I love."