Make New York Post a Preferred Source The moles want gold!
Two nitwit nightcrawlers — including a particularly portly “mole person” — were busted Thursday for diving into a Manhattan manhole in a subterranean quest for precious metals, police and law-enforcement sources said.
Cops nabbed Kevin Rodriguez, 26, and Samuel Reveron, 25 – both Venezuelan citizens – near their Queens homes in connection to a surreal pre-dawn Wednesday sewer escapade just steps from the Loews Regency New York on the Upper East Side.
The strange shenanigans could end up shedding light on the motivations of mysterious “mole people” spotted popping out of sewers — as Reveron admitted to fishing for gold in the city’s steamy depths, prosecutors said.
“We go into the sewers to look for valuables that go into the sewer drains,” he allegedly told a police officer, according to prosecutors.
Reveron and his accused compatriot — the jumbo-sized sewer spelunker Rodriguez — were arraigned Friday on trespass and conspiracy charges in Manhattan court.
A federal law-enforcement source briefed on the matter said that neither suspect appeared to have had malicious intent or posed any threat to the dignitaries staying at the hotel, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in town for the UN General Assembly.
Both are part of a larger pattern across the city where spelunkers search for precious metals below ground, the source said.
“We have seen a number of incidents over the past few months of individuals going into the sewer system to look for valuables and other scrap metal after a storm,” the NYPD said in a statement.
“This incident fits that same criteria, but out of an abundance of caution given the UN General Assembly and the sensitivity of the location, the NYPD is conducting additional security sweeps with our federal partners.”
Rodriguez, Reveron and a third suspect were spotted around 4:35 a.m. climbing out of the underground pit on Park Avenue near East 61st Street, authorities said.
They fled in two vehicles that headed north on Park Avenue, police said.
When Reveron was picked up, he was driving without a license and charged separately for that offense, police said.
He has one previous arrest for criminal mischief in Queens, authorities and sources said.
Both men are expected to return to court for the sewer case on Nov. 25.
The bizarre incident is latest one of many involving mysterious manhole divers in recent months.
This year alone, the elusive “mole people” were spotted popping out of manholes in Middle Village, Queens, Williamsburg and Gravesend in Brooklyn – and even near Manhattan’s bustling Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.
— Additional reporting by Zoe Hussain
