Treasures abound beneath metropolis streets for anybody courageous or loopy sufficient to discover the murky depths of the Large Apple’s sprawling 7,500-mile sewer system — all in the hunt for a wayward pockets or piece of knickknack that will have fallen by a grate above.
These temptations have been placed on full show final week by two separate incidents caught on digicam Friday evening, the place troops of individuals have been seen rising from manhole covers throughout Brooklyn after sneaking across the steamy depths in what police mentioned have been seemingly scavenging operations.
The ever-present risk of arrest and apparent dangers to non-public security are apparently no deterrent for these intrepid subterranean explorers — for whom no gemstone is simply too dirty and no coin too crud-covered so as to add to their loot pouches — with quite a few such incidents capturing the town’s consideration over time.
One taking place made headlines In 2015, when half time metropolis Division of Environmental Safety employee Marquis Evans, then 21, led two buddies down a Brooklyn manhole in the hunt for “gold, jewellery and weapons” in metropolis sewers, cops mentioned on the time.
The trio took a number of such belowground “scavenger hunt” excursions earlier than the legislation caught up with Evans and his associates Damien Nieves and David Hannibal. They have been slapped with legal trespassing prices after spending 4 hours trying to find them.
“God is aware of what they have been in search of,” then-police Commissioner Invoice Bratton mentioned following the arrests.
“I do know rattling certain I wouldn’t be crawling by the sewers of New York, however these three evidently have been as much as one thing down there.”
A decade later, the attract of scooping up misplaced valuables was additionally the motivation for a distinct threesome who have been arrested for descending into the Brooklyn sewers in April 2025.
One of many males, Willer Inexperienced informed police on the time, “The rationale we went down there’s that folks lose their gold down there. We obtained to promote it to generate profits.”
And the attract of the sewers has apparently all the time been round — a spate of New York Instances articles from the 1800s described claims of jewels being pulled from their depths, whereas tales of criminals tossing medicine and different stashes into storm drains has stuffed motion pictures and crime tales over time.
The age of web streaming has ratcheted the decision of the sewer up one other stage, with movies from city explorers cropping up on-line over time to offer first-person views down the darkish depths of subway tunnels and slimy metropolis drain techniques.
After the 2015 incident, former Commissioner Bratton mentioned there was little that could possibly be completed to forestall foolhardy individuals from prying up the town’s almost 200-pound manhole covers and descending into the harmful tunnels under.
“Getting into a sewer with out correct authorization and coaching is against the law, extremely irresponsible and harmful,” he mentioned on the time, in accordance with the Instances. “The fact is we can’t be in every single place defending all the pieces from everyone.”
No arrests have been made within the newest spate of Brooklyn sewer treasure hunters, the place separate teams of males have been seen climbing out of two manhole covers in Gravesend and Williamsburg.
Footage from the Gravesend incident obtained by Flatbush Scoop confirmed a person prying again a manhole cowl from McDonald Ave. round 2 a.m. and stashing it between close by automobiles — when seven males proceeded to file out of the bottom one after the other.
They every had flashlights and seemed to be carrying boots and total waders, and milled collectively round a trio of automobiles whereas they stripped off their filthy apparel.
The people tossed their garments — and no matter they discovered within the floor — into the automobiles, earlier than driving off.
Sources informed The Submit it was seemingly that these tunnels have been seemingly as much as nothing greater than their scavenging predecessors had gotten as much as — citing cash, wallets, scrap steel, jewellery or different valuables as their possible targets.
The supply famous that city scavenging of that nature is a extra frequent follow in different international locations, however is way from remarkable in New York.
