An SUV-driving thief used a heavy chain to rip an ATM out of a Chinatown bank — then tried to drag the cash dispenser all the way over the Manhattan Bridge.
But the chain snapped at the span’s Bowery entrance, leaving the bumbling bandit empty-handed.
“Sparks from the dragged ATM lit up the Bowery like it was the Chinese New Year,” a source noted. “The machine was badly damaged. There were drag marks six blocks long.”
The unidentified crook broke into the Cathay Bank on East Broadway around 2:30 a.m. New Year’s morning by smashing the glass door, sources said.
He attached one side of the chain to the back of his vehicle and the other to a small ATM inside the bank’s vestibule, sources said.
The suspect then floored the pedal of the blue SUV, ripping the machine out of the wall, sources said.
He raced northbound on Bowery with the ATM tumbling down the street, sources said.
The machine came to a crashing halt when the chain gave out about 50 feet from the entrance of the Manhattan Bridge, sources said.
The SUV sped on to Brooklyn, but not before a witness jotted down the license plate, sources said.
Cops are still looking for the car, and probing whether the theft is part of a citywide pattern, the sources said.
The heist is near the scene of another bizarre attempted ATM theft from 2009.
Valentin Garcia tried to remove the machine from outside a Rutgers Street supermarket by ramming it with his van.
Witnesses called cops and he ran off. When he ran out of asphalt, the thief jumped in the East River and tried to swim for it.
Garcia was fished out of the water by harbor patrol boats.
And, in July, thieves used a stolen backhoe to smash through the wall of a Queens bank to pull out an ATM — but could not break the machine open with the mechanical arm, authorities said.
They stole the $200,000 vehicle from a nearby construction company by cutting a padlock off a 30-foot fence and used it to break through the wall of the Chase Bank on 48th Street near 54th Avenue in Maspeth.