Staten Island, NY – A band of brazen thieves ripped off hundreds of New Yorkers by rigging ATMs to steal account and password information from bank customers.

They used the pilfered info to swipe half a million dollars from their victims’ bank accounts – the latest twist in increasingly aggressive identity-theft scams, police said.

The NYPD is hunting the rigged-ATM crew after the havoc they created stealing from Sovereign Bank customers.

The first – a skimmer – went over the slot where customers insert their ATM cards. The skimmer reads, and stores, the personal information kept in the magnetic strip on the back of the bank card.

The second gizmo was a tiny camera hidden in the lighted signs over the ATM.

The pinhole camera lens pointed directly onto the ATM keypad and filmed victims typing in their supposedly secret PIN codes.

The crew stole more than $500,000 from more than 250 victims – money the bank is now reimbursing.

The thieves would then create their own phony ATM cards and use their victim’s PIN to dip into accounts, often going to other banks, like Citibank, to make the withdrawals.

Pictures of three crew members were captured by the banks’ surveillance cameras as the thieves installed the devices or withdrew money, said Lt. Ruperto Aguilar, head of the NYPD’s identity theft squad.

Skimmers, now illegal, have turned up on bank ATM machines and gas pumps and in the pockets of crooked waiters at high-end restaurants, police said.

(LINK to NY Daily News)