The police have nailed four persons suspected of being responsible for a rush of lift part thefts around Chisinau. Three of them confessed to have once been maintenance men while working for the municipal enterprise “Lift-Service”. The men are charged with stealing parts and mechanisms from passenger elevators for their valuable metallic contents, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to Chisinau's police chief Iacob Gumenita, one of the suspects, who quit from Lift-Service in 2007, committed several thefts in Botanica district. Two other former Lift-Service employees, father and son, allegedly committed the most of such thefts, that is 26 in Rascani, 9 in Buiucani and a couple of other in Centru. The fourth suspect has nothing in common with the municipal enterprise. Some of the cases have already been passed to district courts, while the rest are still investigated. Iacob Gumenita informed that over March and April the police have received 54 elevator theft reports from people. It seems that no case of this kind occurred in the course of May. At the same time, Lift-Service director Ion Stanciu claimed that the arrested young man had never been a member of their personnel, while his father quit his job 10 years ago. Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca urged Stanciu to do a better job in monitoring his staff to prevent recurrences, while keeping the mechanism compartments of the elevators tightly closed and well protected. Elevator thefts grew in number in March, with 70 reports recorded. Stanciu said then the enterprise sustained losses of 100,000 lei because of the thefts. Last year the figure amounted to 540,000 lei.