A Manhattan postal worker has been charged with cranking out and selling phony parking placards and credentials for high-profile sporting events - a troubling security breach.

Officials from the NFL, NHL, NBA and Major League Baseball were alerted after cops busted Jerome Knauer, 43, yesterday and seized a trove of bogus but realistic access tags.

Knauer, a nerdy bachelor who co-workers nicknamed "Sleepy" for his habit of sleeping on the job, used his home computer to create the documents, cops said.

"He looks like a bum, but he paints like a maestro," said a law enforcement source who saw some of the fakes.

A mail sorter at the Lenox Hill Station postal facility on the upper East Side, Knauer drew the focus of investigators after complaints about phony NYPD parking placards cropped up.

One of the placards - which allow cops to park in off-limits zones - had the markings of Queens' 115th Precinct, where Detective Joseph Trovato began a probe.

[more at: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2008/09/18/2008-09-18_cops_bust_fake_parking_placard_and_crede-2.html]