News

ATM news of the weird

November 17, 2004

State of confusion: Police collared a befuddled Boston bandit suspected of starting off a daylong robbery spree by mistaking a copy shop for a bank.

According to a Boston Herald report, a bank robber was nabbed covered in telltale dye at a Brookline, Mass., gas station after allegedly holding up a nearby Citizens Bank branch.

Police believe the same man tried to pull off a bank job at the Image X-Press copy shop on the Boston University campus earlier the same morning.

The man allegedly passed a note to one of the copy shop clerks demanding money; the employee informed the man that he was not in a bank.

Later that day, the same man allegedly robbed a Fleet Bank and a Citizens Bank, where he took about $2,500 that was protected by an explosive dye pack.

Heist with a hitch: According to a report in the Raleigh (N.C.) News Observer, thieves in Wake County helped themselves to a pickup with a 16-foot trailer and an attached Bobcat loader in the early morning hours of Sept. 13.

The thieves went to the State Employees' Credit Union five miles east of Pittsboro, where they unloaded the Bobcat and knocked through a free-standing kiosk to get to the ATM inside. They then wrapped a chain around the machine and started to yank it off its foundation.

When an alarm went off, the thieves bailed in their getaway car, a Ford truck. They left the unearthed ATM in the credit union parking lot.

About a quarter mile away, they drove the getaway truck, headlights off, into a pond.

"They were having a bad day," said Chatham County Sheriff Richard H. Webster.

Using a trained dog, sheriff's deputies followed the thieves' trail for about a mile before losing it. But deputies believe the getaway truck was registered to one of the thieves.

ATM apologists: Two Australian ATM technicians who admitted stealing $70,000 from a machine they installed received light sentences with no jail time, largely because of the "significant remorse" they exhibited, according to reports in The Age and the Melbourne Herald Sun.

The judge said there were unusual circumstances in the case, including the men's apparent remorse. One man vomited at the scene after the theft, and the court heard the two men were in tears before they admitted the crime to their employer.

According to the published reports, the men took the cash in full view of security cameras hours after setting up the machine at a shopping center when they realized that cash-in-transit workers had mistakenly left the ATM's safe unlocked. They regretted the spur-of-the-moment robbery and turned themselves in that same evening, confessing to a coworker, who told the court the pair was hysterical. "I've never seen two men cry so much."

Police were called to the house, where they arrested the men and recovered all but $50 of the stolen cash. Both men pleaded guilty to one count each of theft.