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Police: Crook steals jewels worth thousands from designer’s outdoor vending machine

Spare no dispense! High-end vending machine at Williamsburg park sells jewelry for big bucks
Photo by Caroline Ourso

This jeweler got rocked.

Some savvy snake stole thousands in baubles from a designer’s jewelry-dispensing vending machine inside a Williamsburg park by using fraudulent credit cards to trick the gadget into spitting out trinkets without actually paying for them, cops said.

The thief swiped the fake plastic around 1:15 pm on Sept. 20 to score approximately $13,000 worth of jewelry from designer Marla Aaron’s vending machine inside the privately owned but publicly accessible Vale Park next to the swanky William Vale Hotel on Wythe Avenue between N. 12th and N. 13th streets, according to authorities.

Aaron brought her machine — which sold pieces from her eponymous line that features such baubles as an $165 silver-link chain and an $1,588 lock necklace — to the green space in June, after debuting it at the Brooklyn Museum last year, and this summer told the Brooklyn Paper that she wasn’t concerned about thievery, because the gadget is equipped with cameras and weighs hundreds of pounds.

“It weighs a ton — literally,” she said.

The jeweler previously said she planned to keep the machine in the park until sometime this month, and it was no longer in place as recently as Sunday, according to a New York Daily News report. Police Department spokesman Sgt. Vincent Marchese could not confirm if Aaron or authorities moved the machine following the theft, however, citing a lack of that information in the complaint report.

Cops are searching for a suspect in his twenties or thirties, who is about 5-feet-10-inches tall, and 220 pounds, according to police.

Aaron did not immediately return requests for comment.

Anyone with information regarding the incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577–8477. The public can also submit tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at www.nypdcrimestoppers.com or by texting tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577. All tips are strictly confidential.

Crook: Cops are hunting for this man, who they said used fake credit cards to steal some $13,000 worth of jewelry from designer Marla Aaron’s vending machine inside Williamsburg’s Vale Park last month.
NYPD