Stealing from ATMs is not exactly easy money. Plenty of people have unsuccessfully tried to crack open that hard metal exterior and get the delicious nugget of cash inside, but few succeed.
Dragging the machine behind a pickup doesn’t work, drilling up through the bottom doesn’t either, and now we can add one more failed strategy to the list: attempting to bore into an ATM using a blowtorch.
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According to Q13 FOX, some would-be crooks in Washington State tried that on Tuesday and wound up turning the whole cache of cash into ash.
Everett, Washington, police officer Aaron Snell told Q13 that cops and firefighters showed up at Coastal Community Bank to find its outdoor ATM sporting a pretty bad burn. The thieves had apparently pulled a Qui-Gon with a blowtorch to get at the machine’s cash box, but lit all the bills on fire instead, fleeing without any money.
Coastal Community’s COO, John Dickson, told Q13 that some masked thieves had just recently tried unsuccessfully to rob the bank’s cash deposit box, suggesting that maybe the same crooks came back to give it another go. Police are planning to review the bank’s security cameras to hopefully identify the suspects.
In the meantime, the failed thieves should read up on some tricks of the trade from more successful ATM crooks.