Union leaders have supplemented their incomes by ignoring frequent teacher absences and pocketing the salaries of phantom employees.

Prosecutors said he cashed paychecks for phantom employees and also voted from a false home address.

The indictment said the ring obtained about $250,000 in the last four years by putting a phantom employee on The Post's payroll.

Yet another method is to create phantom employees, who are then paid with payroll checks.

Mr. Cherkasky said the ring set up phantom employees by using fictitious names, the names of dead people and relatives and collected their pay checks.

These so-called phantom employees would have been eligible for the union's group medical plans and possibly even pensions.

Asked about the phantom employee, Mr. Gulotta said that with every department short-handed "thankfully there are some public employees who have been willing to work in other departments on a temporary basis to help out."

One of the most common ploys phantom employees like to pull is the light trick.

One phantom employee, former Queens Assemblyman Clifford Wilson, was paid $1,650 a week to serve as a New York City-based legislative "counsel."

Mr. Colon was recently indicted on charges of stealing nearly $400,000 by cashing payroll checks made out to phantom employees.