Brazen ATM Thieves Strike In Brooklyn, Queens And Staten Island
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - The NYPD is searching for a team of brazen thieves who specialize in robbing ATMs.
They're wanted for ATM thefts in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, reports CBS2's Jenna DeAngelis.
A surveillance video shows as hooded suspects manage to yank an ATM out of a business on Knickerbocker Avenue in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn.
They place it in the back of a white getaway van double-parked with its hazard lights on, and then drive off.
Police say this happened around 4 a.m. on Sept. 19 while the store was open. The employee was in the back of the business at the time.
"That's a 24-hour place and there's whole spans of time when you don't see an employee there," said Peter O'Reilly, who lives in Bushwick. "I do laundry there, it's not surprising."
At a Sunset Park bagel store, they didn't get as lucky.
"They didn't actually come in, I guess when they realized there was somebody actually in here, they left," said Nilsa Mejia of Sunset Bagels. "The employee heard banging on the window and he thought it was a co-worker, so he came and checked but there was nobody here.
"They had the right tools to break the lock without making a big ruckus," she said.
This is one of nine incidents police believe the suspects are connected to in three boroughs.
The incidents span from Sept. 6 to Oct. 14 in the overnight or early morning hours.
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In many cases, the suspects appeared to break into stores, steal cash or even whole ATM machines before fleeing.
In some instances, they left empty-handed, while in others it's not clear how much money they allegedly stole. Police say one missing ATM was stocked with more than $6,000.
Police are looking for three men last seen wearing hooded sweatshirts, masks and carrying baseball hats.
Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74682), logging onto the Crime stoppers website at www.nypdcrimestoppers.com, or by texting tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enterings TIP577.
