Three New Yorkers face grand larceny charges for using a software glitch to steal and re-sell $800,000 public transit rides from that city's Metropolitan Transit Authority since September 2005.

It makes you wonder: If such people are so resourceful as to use high-tech rip-offs of public transit systems, why can't they find a ride themselves? Get Enterprise to pick them up or something?

More seriously, it makes you wonder: Is there no shame? Taxpayers already subsidize transportation for those who can't afford their own. To then go one step further and rip off the very taxpayers who are giving you a handout -- well, you can go lower than that, but you really have to try. It's tantamount to being invited to dinner and leaving with the silver.

Sadly, that kind of slap in the face to taxpayers is occurring right here in River City.

As part of a new $1 hotel room tax the city began levying last March to pay for the new convention center, Augusta agreed to allow hotel guests to ride city buses free. It's a modest way of thanking visitors to the city and helping them enjoy what it has to offer. And it will be an even more important perk once the convention center is built and thousands congregate there.

But all of a sudden there are a bunch of hotel "guests" swarming the city -- some of whom, oddly enough, have been riding city buses for some time.

Turns out the hotel room key cards guests use as their bus fare have been stolen wholesale and sold or handed out to some city residents, who've been using them to ride free all over town.

The city did a survey earlier this year and learned that as many as 8,000 of the hotel cards have been used for free bus rides inside of one month.

One bus driver took a half-dozen of the freeloaders to a place on U.S. Highway 25 that buys plasma. So, after sucking some of the lifeblood from taxpayers, it appears some of these leeches are selling it.

They're also selling the stolen cards for as much as $20 or $30 apiece, one man told WJBF-Channel 6. Transit Director Heyward Johnson estimates about 60 to 100 of the bus barnacles rip the city off each day.

Clearly, the city and taxpayers are being taken for a ride.

The trick, city officials say, is to find a solution that is neither burdensome for the hotels and their guests nor expensive for the city. They say education and spot-check enforcement will help. City Administrator Fred Russell wants signs on each bus warning riders that the card keys are for hotel guests only. And drivers may be asked to question suspicious riders -- longtime patrons they recognize, for example, who suddenly have a hotel room key.

Both should have been done from the start, but city officials admit they're surprised and saddened by the number of area residents who have chosen to scam the system. The city may have to go to a dated pass system -- much more burdensome for the hotels -- or to dropping the program all together.

How sad. These parasites are ripping off taxpayers, who are already subsidizing the city transit system to the tune of $4 million a year. And they're making it difficult, if not downright distasteful, to do a little something nice for the city's visitors.

No wonder there's only one letter difference between scam and scum.