They left work with guns hidden in their clothes. Now they’ve got to pay up.

Three former Academy Sports distribution center workers have been sentenced to three years of probation for hiding guns in their clothing, then smuggling them out of the Twiggs County warehouse as they left work.

Vincent Allen, Harold Dinkins and Joshua Milner, all of Macon, each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal firearms in November.

Allen and Dinkins were sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. Milner was sentenced Thursday.

A judge has ordered the men to pay $6,635 in restitution to Academy Sports.

Here’s what happened, according to their plea agreements:

A night supervisor at the Academy warehouse spotted Allen, Dinkins and Milner standing beside a rack of kayaks on Aug. 15, 2013, far from their assigned work area.

The men, who worked in the dock area, were supposed to be on break, also in a place far from where they were found.

The supervisor saw Milner kneeling down by the kayaks and digging something out. He also saw Dinkins stuffing something into his pants.

After moving closer, the supervisor saw Milner holding the barrel of an assault weapon.

The supervisor asked what the men were doing, and Dinkins began to unload his pants. Rifle parts were found on Milner and Dinkins.

An internal Academy investigation later revealed another rifle underneath a shelf, appearing to have been discarded.

The rifles were shipped to the warehouse in one piece, stored in a hard plastic gun case inside a cardboard box.

Six crushed gun cases were found in the trash compactor near where the men were spotted.

Allen later told authorities he took a rifle to his sister’s apartment in Macon and hid it underneath a mattress. The gun wasn’t there when police went to find it.

He later admitted he had found two Rossi revolvers in a box on the receiving dock after they were delivered Aug. 14, 2013, and that he and Milner hid the guns in their clothes and walked out of the warehouse after their shift ended.

On another occasion, Allen said he found a shipment of five Sig 9mm pistols on a pallet that should have been locked in the gun cage. After he, Miller and Dinkins took the guns out of their boxes, Allen took the cases and crushed them in the trash compactor and walked out with the guns hidden in the waistband of his clothes when he left for the day.

On the day before they were caught, Allen and Milner broke down six rifles into two pieces each. They used instructions they saw on YouTube. The men hid a rifle in their pants and walked out of the warehouse at the end of their shift.

Dinkins said he put the guns in the boats where they were later found and that he put the cases in the trash compactor.

The men were in the process of hiding the remaining guns in their clothes when they were caught Aug. 15, 2013.

Dinkins said he put the rifle he’d stolen, and a pistol he claimed he found in Macon, into a trash bin behind his Warner Robins apartment complex. Warner Robins police found a rifle in the trash bin, a Sig Sauer pistol and several ammunition magazines. Records show both guns were shipped to the Academy distribution center in July and August 2013, but were never received by the firearms cage.

This story was originally published April 10, 2017 at 4:43 PM with the headline "They left work with guns hidden in their clothes. Now they’ve got to pay up.."