Roving Thieves Cleaning Out East Bay Vending Machines, Arcade Games
OAKLAND (KPIX 5) --- A band of stealthy bandits has been targeting game machines and small Bay Area bars and businesses and getting away clean.
There are crowbar marks on a machine the bandits robbed at an Oakland bar.
Owner Allison says they mark the spot where just two months ago, four people walked in and cleaned the cash out of her coin-operated arcade games.
"One man was sitting at the games with some kind of a bolt cutter or crow bar while the other three were surrounding him pretending to play the games and one was acting as a lookout," says Allison.
Surveillance video shows three men and a woman huddled around the pinball machines on January 16 in full view of other patrons. To be fair, you can't see what they're doing, but Allison says when workers checked the machines later, they had been vandalized and emptied.
"I was angry that it had happened and I was concerned about the other businesses in the area that also have gaming machines," she said.
Allison decided to circulate pictures of the four suspects to other bar owners. Lo and behold, they are the same people who have hit several different businesses.
In all, five bars in Oakland and Alameda have had their vending machines, arcade games and pool tables emptied in the last six months, according to Allison. Surveillance video shows what appears to be the same people though it's tough to tell exactly what they're doing at the machines.
The owner of Oakland's Mad Oak Bar pointed out a man in the video who surrounded his bar's dart machine a few months ago with three other people. He later discovered hundreds of dollars missing from the machine.
Oakland police say they are investigating but Allison wants to spread the word on her own.
"We need to take action as a community and hope to get some arrests in this case," she said.
No word as to how much the thieves have gotten away with.
So far police have not been able to identify the suspects.
