Real-estate brokers are quaking in their blazers thanks to a pair of brazen thieves – one possibly dressed in drag – who have sauntered into a slew of open houses in tony Manhattan buildings and ripped off the well-heeled sellers.
The crooks – who pretend to be potential buyers – have struck at least four open houses in one month, cops said.
They have made off with plenty of big-ticket booty, including several diamond rings, a fur coat, a Coach bag and a Tiffany clock – even a bottle of Veuve Clicquot for their champagne tastes.
Their latest larceny was on Sunday, cops said, at a three-bedroom, three-bath duplex on Broadway near West 88th Street that’s going for close to $1.9 million.
“My agent caught one of the two women in the act, and when confronted the two women panicked, dropped most but not all of what they had stolen, and dashed out of the building,” Douglas Heddings, a vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman, posted on his blog.
“One of the women ran into the bathroom when caught, relieved herself, cleaned herself with a bath towel, threw it in the bathtub and ran out of the apartment pushing past my agent and suggesting she would sue him if he touched her.”
In a later post, he said the agent who was handling the open house, identified by cops as Tom Ring, “is almost certain that the brunette is a man in drag.”
Ring declined to comment further yesterday when contacted by The Post.
In one pic captured on surveillance camera, it appears the robber is adjusting a wig.
Heddings, who declined to comment for this story, wrote on the blog that he received a flurry of responses from others in the industry who believe they were victims of the serial thieves.
Ever the salesman, he urged his real-estate colleagues to soldier on with open houses.
“They remain the most powerful tool to sell most apartments!” he wrote.
In the Broadway larceny, the thieves got away with a diamond ring and an “eternity” ring, cops said.
The other three heists were on Oct. 28, when the pilfering pair – again posing as potential buyers – hit up three open houses in three hours on the Upper East Side, starting at noon.
They started on East 96th Street, right near Fifth Avenue, at noon, police sources said.
After ripping off the owner’s designer bag and pricey clock, they hurried along to an open house at 1 p.m. on East 82nd Street.
There they stole a dress, earrings and the tasty bubbly, before heading to a 2 o’clock showing on East 78th Street near Third Avenue.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona