Top Stories

NYPD Arrests Suspected Parking Meter Thief

Mizrahi Allegedly Stole $6,000 In Quarters

BROOKLYN (CBS) ― A man accused of stealing $6,000 from parking meters is now in police custody.

The NYPD says 34-year-old Brooklyn resident Maurice Mizrahi stole the money, all in quarters, by digging up and hauling away 87 parking meters from sidewalks in Gravesend, Bensonhurst and Sheepshead Bay.

The meters were found in a crawlspace in his Mizrahi's home.

"He removed the tops some of them are removed from the bottom as you can see some of them go a foot and a half two feet into the ground," said Capt. George Mastrokostas, NYPD Precinct Commander.

Mizrahi was arrested seven times in the past for stealing parking meters. He lives on E. 1st Street with his mother. Investigators say she called them when she returned from a long vacation and made the incredible find.

"I don't know what he was doing. I know he was in trouble before that, the extent I don't know," said neighbor Isaac Pawil.

The big find appears to solve a mystery that has plagued Avenue U for years: parking meters disappearing overnight, and no witnesses nor surveillance video.

"We'd wake up and wouldn't see nothing," Gravesend resident Adolfo Sanchez said.

"They used to just fail, the meters, now they're taking them completely," said resident Michael Kovalik.

Resident Yazid Assad joked, "Free parking spaces, and what would you say to the guy stealing them? Good job."

Replacing each one of these starts at about $500. Almost all of the stolen meters were too badly damaged to be salvaged.

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

---