Source: a video screenshot, Youtube, PhiladelphiaPolice

An American store manager was left baffled after thieves executed a sophisticated plan to steal a Bitcoin ATM that “wasn’t doing well” – leaving a cash-filled conventional ATM behind.

Police in Philidelphia said two men used crowbars to break open a “Bitcoin machine” in the early hours of January 21, and released video surveillance footage of the incident.

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The video shows the two men arriving in a car, then entering the Quick Mart store in the Mayfair district of the city and prying open the machine to remove what appears to be a cash box from the device – before driving away.

Police are still searching for the suspects, but the store manager suggested that the robbers may have made the wrong choice.

CBS Local quotes the manager, Hashid Alsaidi, as stating that “what surprised him” is the fact that the robbers “didn’t touch the [conventional] ATM that was within arms’ reach.”

Alsaidi said the Bitcoin ATM “isn’t very popular” and did not believe the raiders “made away with much.”

He said,

“Honestly, it wasn’t doing good anyway.”

However, it seems the attackers knew a thing or two about Bitcoin and the inner workings of crypto ATMs.

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The manager added,

“They looked like they knew what they were doing. It was so fast […] They came and they just popped it open.”

As Bitcoin ATMs become more commonplace, it seems more thieves are targeting the machines – although some of these criminal early adopters have been more successful than others. Canadian raiders left behind a bumper haul of USD 38,000 in a November robbery last year.

And two American thieves walked out of a Washington shopping mall with a Bitcoin ATM wrapped in a blanket in August 2019.

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