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Think of it as a bank robbery without a bank.
Three men in a white S.U.V. pull up in front of a Queens grocery store in the overnight darkness. One waits outside while the other two disable the surveillance cameras on the front of the building and break open the security gate and door.
An alarm goes off. The burglars ignore it. Inside, they approach their target: a slim, gray A.T.M. wedged in between shelves of pita bread, potato chips and laundry detergent.
The men wear gaiter-style masks, gloves and hoodies. No fingerprints; no faces captured on video. They wrestle the machine loose from the floor, hustle its 200-plus pounds outside to the getaway vehicle and speed off, dangling wires and scattered snacks in their wake.
These kinds of brute-force heists last maybe five minutes. The take? Next to nothing or perhaps as much as $60,000 — enough for a blowout weekend in Las Vegas.
The burglary, at 75 St. Super Bazaar in East Elmhurst two days before Christmas, was one of more than three dozen by the same three-man crew from September through January, the police suspect. Investigators were examining 16 similar break-ins last summer as possibly linked.
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