FARMINGTON – Two teenagers were charged with more than 40 counts each of burglary of motor vehicles Thursday in relation to sprees in two towns, Lt. Jack Peck said.

Joshua Greenawalt, 19, of Jay and a 16-year-old boy were charged with the series of class D crimes after four days of investigation by police, Peck said.

On Monday, more than two-dozen unlocked cars in business parking lots were entered and ransacked. Money, cigarettes, a prescription bottle and some bank cards were taken. The only lead police had initially was from a woman who had seen a green van and two males in one of the parking lots.

Phone tips were instrumental in helping break the case, Peck said. “We started getting phone calls yesterday about the green caravan-style vehicle. One caller said he saw that vehicle (Monday) behind Richard’s Florist that same day,” Peck said. After seeing the van, he got into his car and noticed a cupholder with change was missing.

The caller wrote the van’s license plate number down, Peck said. “They weren’t correct, but they were just transposed.”

After some work on the computer, they found that the van was owned by a man who’s teenage son had been charged earlier this year with a similar crime, Peck said. “We put two and two together,” he said.

On Thursday, police found the two suspects in the van, along with some stolen property, including a cell phone, a car stereo and speakers, and the cup holder with change. The two teens confessed to breaking into the cars as well as to some crimes that had not yet been reported, Peck said.

Police also found items stolen from cars in Livermore Falls and Jay.

“They call it car shopping,” Peck said. “They enter unlocked cars, see what they can get, and steal it.”

“To do this many in broad daylight is unusual,” he said.

Besides burglary, Greenawalt was charged with operating without a license and possession of a useable amount of marijuana.

Neither was arrested.

The two were charged with burglaries in Jay, too, Detective Richard Caton IV said. The juvenile was charged with 16 counts of burglary of a motor vehicle, and Greenawalt was charged with 14, bringing them up to 46 and 44 counts, respectively.

“I’ve never had 46 counts in one setting, but this was over a couple of weeks that they did all this,” Caton said.

The two have confessed to burglaries in parking lots at Hannaford and at the Wausau and Verso mills, Caton said.

Charges are pending in Livermore Falls, officer Maurice Drouin said Thursday.