$17 Million Was Stolen From ATMs. SYEP Teens Were Blamed.

In the video, three grown men stand in the back of a mostly empty bodega around an ATM, a fat stack of dollar bills on a shelf beside them. The location is nondescript; the store appears stocked with everyday goods like pasta, cooking oil, and plastic cutlery. But the thousands and thousands of dollars in $20 bills, which one man picks up and fans out for the camera, is anything but normal for the setting. Debit cards do not usually allow account holders to withdraw more than about $1,000 in cash a day. Using a Visa DashPay card, which is briefly visible in the video, the men were pulling every dollar out of the machine.

It was the weekend of July 11, and similar scenes were taking place in bodegas and delis across New York City. In the span of about 48 hours, some $17 million was taken f