In exchange for theater tickets and limousine-chauffeured dinner dates, employees of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey granted no-show jobs to contractors who were supposed to be clearing wreckage from the World Trade Center, according to Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

“We were providing checks for employees that did not exist,” the Port Authority’s inspector general, Robert Van Etten, said.

Seventeen men, including four Port Authority employees and contractors from three companies, were charged with enterprise corruption for defrauding the Port Authority out of as much as $2.5 million. The contractors allegedly inflated prices for materials, accepted payment for “ghost” employees, and profited illegally from cleanup jobs related to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“These are pretty sexy charges,” a defense attorney, Ronald Rubenstein, said, carrying a packing box filled with indictment papers as he left the courtroom with client Joseph DePietto, 41, an accountant from Westbury, on Long Island. “Prosecutors are always good on arraignments, but we’ll see what the trial brings.”

The amount of stolen money bears little resemblance to the comparatively paltry kickbacks, Mr. Van Etten said.

“It starts with free tickets to a concert, then $1,000 tickets, then limousines and a dinner,” Mr. Van Etten said. “The amounts were small and the consequences were great.”

Functionaries at the Port Authority who were charged included a senior construction engineer, Anthony Fontanetta, 46, of Ridgewood, Queens; an environmental field operations manager, Mark Jakubek, 45, of upstate Monroe; an environmental inspector, Antonio Bueti, 62, of Medford, on Long Island, and a contract employee, Robert Leary, 33, of East Meadow on Long Island. They allegedly provided favors in exchange for cash bribes, tickets to sports events, the use of vacation homes, and other gifts. Mr. Leary, who worked at Hangar 17 at John F. Kennedy International Airport, took $50 a day for each ghost employee, prosecutors charged.

“Then they own them,” Mr. Van Etten said, alleging that the public employees would steer work to the contractors and would sign off on no-show positions.

According to prosecutors, Port Authority investigators started looking into the over billing practices of asbestos-removal company Comprehensive Environmental of New York Inc. in March 2000 and discovered that the principal was a convicted felon – grounds for terminating a contract. The investigation bogged down, however, after terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, because the records were stored at the Port Authority office at the North Tower.

The investigators charged that the contractors, led by John Skinner, 41, of Berkeley Heights, N.J., and Michael Adams, 48, of Alford, Mass., then formed a new company, Specialty Service Contracting Inc., and began to secure contracts with the Port Authority. Because of the destroyed records, officials at Port Authority did not realize they were dealing with suspects from the original investigation.

Much of the work involved asbestos removal jobs at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Specialty Service Contracting secured a contract cleaning wreckage from the World Trade Center. The wreckage included pieces of the steel structure, crushed vehicles of the police and fire departments, and the antenna from the North Tower, all stored at Hangar 17.

Mr. Leary, the contract employee, allegedly signed off on two to three “ghost” employees at Hangar 17 from February 2002 to February 2004, cheating the Port Authority of more than $100,000. In addition to those new charges, Mr. Leary was indicted in May for allegedly falsifying records to extend the asbestos abatement job at Hangar 17. He was accused of switching negative samples taken at the World Trade Center site from Hangar 17 with asbestos-tainted samples from a different job site at the Delta Airlines terminal.

Specialty Service Contracting also allegedly engaged in a no-show job scam at an asbestos abatement site at the British Airways building at JFK and illegally obtained a contract at the New Paltz campus of State University New York that was intended for businesses owned by minorities or women, prosecutors charge.

Linked by handcuffs and taking up three rows in a courtroom at Manhattan criminal court, the 17 defendants were arraigned before Judge Michael Obus. All defendants pleaded not guilty and posted bail ranging from $10,000 to $280,000, except for the engineer, Mr. Fontanetta, whose attorney was not present. The defendants are scheduled to appear again January 10.