NEWARK — A video shared by NJ Transit on Tuesday showing a man trying to drag an ATM onto a bus was staged by a comedian, city police confirmed Tuesday evening.

The video went viral after the embattled transportation agency shared funnyman Darius Kinney's video, which purported to be the real thing.

It shows the man struggling to drag the ATM toward the bus stop but then gets stopped in his tracks by a no-nonsense bus driver.

"No no no no no no no no no no," the driver says as she closes the door.

"We could have made money together," the man shouts as the bus pulls away.

New Jersey 101.5 reached out to NJ Transit and city police to confirm whether the video was real or staged.

Police initially said they were investigating but a spokeswoman later confirmed it was a prank.

"The video was staged by a local comedian. The ATM was put out for trash and used to shoot the video," the spokeswoman said.

NJ Transit denied any involvement in creating the video, which the agency shared online as a caption contest. NJ Transit later deleted the tweet without explanation. Warning: The video, available here on Instagram, contains a variant of a racial slur.

"We asked our customers to caption [the] video. However, we did not stage, post or film this so we have no context around the posted video," NJ Transit said when the video was still available on their Twitter feed.

The bus is marked 5782, which according to NJ Transit's schedule runs between Newark Penn Station and Bloomfield Avenue in Newark.

An NJ Transit audit commissioned by the Murphy administration recommended that the transportation agency employ humor on its social media platforms — and many of its Twitter followers were playing along Tuesday.

Some of the captions submitted by the agency's followers:

How to afford a monthly pass

"You take cash"

"Engage, inform and steal"

That's where all the PATH train funding goes

SEPTA would've helped him load it

“Hold that bus......damn all I got is large bills.....can anybody break a $20”

The installation of atm's on all nj transit buses is proceding as scheduled

Other riders took a dim view of the post:

"New Jersey Transit sucks"

Stick to letting us know that there are delays in the Lincoln tunnel

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was updated after Newark police confirmed the video was staged.

Contact reporter Dan Alexander at Dan.Alexander@townsquaremedia.com or via Twitter @DanAlexanderNJ

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