For some time now, we've been puzzling over the fact that we keep seeing people emerge from manholes in New York City and run away. Wags have dubbed them the "mole people," but there's been no indication who these people are, or what they were doing in the labyrinthine New York underground.
That is, until now. Two of the mole people have been caught, and it turns out that they were looking for gold.
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.
This seems more like a side plot in a silly 1980s slapstick comedy movie, like D.C. Cab or Caddyshack, than a serious story from one of our major cities — but here we are. And, yes, they were looking for treasure: Gold and jewels, in an unconventional setting.
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.
We first reported on the sewer-divers earlier in the year; this has been going on at least since May, but until now, the identity and the motivation of the mole people were a mystery. Last August, though, some video emerged on, of course, TikTok.
A trio of headlamp-wearing “mole people” was filmed popping up out of a manhole near Manhattan’s bustling Penn Station in the early morning, according to a new clip of the head-scratching trend.
A video posted on TikTok captured three men clad in headlamps and overalls hurriedly pulling themselves out of the steamy depths of a manhole at 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue — just blocks away from the busy commuter hub and Madison Square Garden.
The clip comes two months after a pair of unusual caught-on-camera sightings of men emerging from manholes in Williamsburg and Gravesend raised concerns in the Big Apple and sparked an NYPD probe.
At the time, speculation was rampant. Possible terrorists making practice runs on some target that they could only approach through the sewers? Was there a colony of homeless people building illegitimate abodes down below? What was going on?
Now, at least in the case of these two, we learn they were just looking for lost valuables. While this isn't exactly a major crime, though, these goofballs could have placed themselves in more danger than they may have thought. The Big Apple has seen severe rains and even flash flooding recently, and it's not impossible that someone caught below ground could be washed away and drowned. So, these two and others like them would seem to be playing a dangerous game indeed.
As of this writing there's no information on the immigration status of the two Venezuelan nationals who were busted for their subterranean activities.