Tunkhannock man faces charges after theft at Brown's Gym

ROBERT TOMKAVAGE, The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa.
·1 min read

A Tunkhannock man faces charges after admitting to stealing money from a wallet inside the locker room at Brown’s Gym in Clarks Summit, police said.

Following a string of wallet thefts at the gym in recent months, owner Jim Brown began check-ins and checkouts during the times of the reported thefts and narrowed them down to one suspect — Ryan Tanner — according to a criminal complaint.

Officers Alexander Keiser and Thomas Kerrigan coordinated with Brown, who informed them Tanner was at the gym Friday at 2 p.m.

While conducting surveillance around 2:21 p.m., Kerrigan entered the gym wearing plain clothes and placed a wallet with a canceled credit card, a movie prop $50 bill and five $1 bills in the pocket of a sweatshirt in the men’s locker room, police said.

Kerrigan observed Tanner enter and exit the locker room several times. When Tanner left the room around 2:35 p.m., Kerrigan went in to check the wallet and noticed the fake $50 bill was missing, per the complaint.

Tanner originally denied taking any money, but later admitted during an interview at the police station to taking the prop $50 bill and discarding it when he realized it was fake. He also confessed to taking $40-$50 from a wallet in the locker room at Brown’s about a month ago, police said.

He told police he didn’t take credit cards or other items from the wallets because he was afraid the charges would be more serious if he was caught, according to the complaint.

Police charged Tanner, 20, 13 Indian Spring Road, with two counts of theft by lawful taking.