Beleaguered Wedtech Places Equipment on Auction Block

About 200 people showed up Tuesday at Wedtech Corp. to bid on items ranging from snow blowers to steel-working machinery at an auction designed to raise money for the scandal-plagued and financially squeezed military contractor.

“The vast majority are businessmen, not curiosity seekers,” said Joseph Hodkin, co-owner of Daley-Hodkin Corp. of Melville, which ran the court-advised auction. “They’re not buying a memento that says ‘Wedtech’ on it.”

Hodkin said he expected to raise about $500,000 Tuesday at the 215,000-square-foot building in the South Bronx where Navy pontoons were manufactured. Another auction was scheduled today at Wedtech’s final assembly and test facility on the East River, with equipment from Wedtech’s other manufacturing plant in the Bronx to be auctioned July 15. In all, officials hope to raise $2 million.

“Everybody here is pretty serious,” said David Fallick, vice president of a Queens company that makes storefronts. He said he hoped to buy a 3-year-old power shear machine, which cost about $50,000 new, for under $20,000.

Four top officials of the Bronx defense contractor have admitted bribing as many as 20 federal, state and local officials to obtain government contracts, and five criminal investigations are under way. The company suspended operations and laid off most of its 1,000 workers in December, then filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Act.