The question is no doubt asked about minibars in hotel rooms across the world: If just one of those tiny liquor bottles were to go missing, would anyone notice?

Now multiply that theoretical question by 100,000 or so — and make it not so theoretical.

On Wednesday, Queens prosecutors and investigators from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced that they had uncovered a ring of 18 airport truck drivers and security guards accused of helping to steal more than 100,000 miniature liquor bottles from American Airlines flights arriving at Kennedy International Airport.

At the home in Jamaica, Queens, of a retired airport truck driver, Domingo A. Duran, investigators found 600 garbage bags, each stuffed with about 100 miniature bottles, the authorities said, as well as $34,000 in cash.