A group of five increasingly brazen ATM bandits has dodged police for more than a year while pulling off 73 heists across the city and netting hundreds of thousands of dollars, The Post has learned.
But the suspects aren’t using PIN codes or any software to access accounts or bank information.
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Instead, they’re simply relying on crowbars, chains and stolen cars to snatch the doors off the money machines — sometimes in front of witnesses in broad daylight — to the amazement of embarrassed cops who still can’t catch them.
They then position stolen cars in the area to thwart responding officers as they make their getaway.
Each theft has netted the gang between $1,300 and nearly $12,000, sources told The Post. But in some of the cases the thieves had to flee empty-handed to evade swarming cop cars, sources said.
The group has struck dozens of times in bodegas, laundromats, pizzerias and gas stations in every borough but Staten Island — prompting NYPD brass to scold detectives for failing to nail them, the sources said.
Last week, the crew even robbed an ATM at Ninth Avenue and West 36th Street in Manhattan — right around the corner from a police station.
“How can they steal it with the police precinct there?” said Awal Abdel, 38, who owns Bombay Deli Pizza & Tandoori Restaurant, where the robbery occurred. “Not even a whole block away.”
A law enforcement source said the suspects’ tactics have changed over the months as they’ve gotten more cocky.
“Before, they were prying open the machines with hand tools,” the source said. “But now, they’re using chains and just taking the boxes, and they’re even going into places that are open with witnesses and carrying the ATM out the front door.”
In the Midtown heist, a witness spotted two male suspects throw a black “safe box” into the passenger-side door of their vehicle and take off, dragging a screeching chain linked to the back of the car down the street before vanishing.
That same day, the gang hit Susanna Pizzeria at 182 Bleecker St. in the West Village.
So far, 19 stolen vehicles have been used in thefts, including one case in which the crooks created a car crash to escape, injuring an officer.
The vehicles are often abandoned nearby afterward, sources said.
A laundromat owner in Queens said the ATM inside his shop was busted open last month in the time it took him to take out the trash.
“A man came in about 20 minutes before the robbery occurred,” said Khemraj Sadoo, 44, who owns First Class Laundry at 74-02 101st Ave. in Ozone Park.
“He came with a crowbar. He made a little opening next to the lock on the ATM machine. Twenty minutes later, he came back with a truck. He opened the door, and the guy backed up the truck and then backed up a second time and sped up, and that’s when the entire door came off from the machine.
“The guy who was holding the door open ran in and grabbed it and ran away,” Sadoo said.
The crooks began their cold-cash scheme in November 2013 outside Rocket Joe’s pizzeria on the Lower East Side.
They pried open the machine at around 3 a.m. while the business was closed and made off with $7,240, police sources said.
Cops said they had several strong leads but did not provide details to protect the case.