Manhattan ‘mole’ mystery: rumors of lost gold spur clandestine excursions into New York sewers

Reports of mysterious gangs of sewer spelunkers have transfixed New Yorkers over the summer. Photograph: william87/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenReports of mysterious gangs of sewer spelunkers have transfixed New Yorkers over the summer. Photograph: william87/Getty ImagesManhattan ‘mole’ mystery: rumors of lost gold spur clandestine excursions into New York sewersA recent arrest suggests that underground invaders of city’s sewer system are lured by the promise of lost valuables

There’s been one thing in particular that has been intriguing New Yorkers this summer: the existence, and whereabouts, of so-called “mole people” – a mysterious group of individuals who spend at least some of their time wading about in the city’s sewers.

New Yorkers learned a bit more about the phenomenon this week, when two men were caught red – or perhaps another color – handed, after allegedly emerging from a tunnel in Manhattan. Their arrests have shed some light on a slew of instances where people have been witnessed lifting manhole covers and clambering underground.

Samuel Reveron and Kevin Rodriguez were apprehended in Queens after police tracked them down through video footage. The pair were allegedly spotted entering the sewers with four other people, who have yet to be identified.

Read moreBoth were charged with criminal trespassing, but it is the reason the men gave for their adventure that has proved particularly fascinating.

“We go into the sewer and look for valuables that get stuck in the storm drains and sewers, gold, anything of value,” Reveron, 25, reportedly told police after his arrest.

The gang’s quest fits an apparently misguided pattern of people thinking New York’s sewers are paved with gold. Last year, three men were arrested after they were allegedly seen emerging from a sewer in Brooklyn, one of them telling police: “The reason we went down there is that people lose their gold down there. We got to get it and sell it to make money.”

Despite that vaulting ambition, there is little evidence that sewer foraging is a lucrative trade. Steve Duncan, a former urban explorer who has spent a lot of time in New York’s sewers and subway tunnels, told the New York Times that in more than 100 sewer trips, the most valuable thing he found was an expired credit card.

Still, the penchant for sewer exploration continues. In May this year there were three separate reported incidents of people climbing down into sewers, two of which were captured on video. In footage of the first incident, three people, wearing dungaree-style hip waders and carrying flashlights, walk into the middle of the road in Astoria, Queens. They haul a circular man cover aside, and descend into the darkness of the sewer.

“Three random guys walking around in a strange suit. Open the sewer, go in like the Ninja Turtles,” eyewitness Aki Jakupovic told NBC New York at the time.

Jakupovic isn’t the first to make the comparison to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a fictional group of human-turtle hybrids who, across a comic book, cartoon TV show and feature film, are depicted as living in the sewers. Per canon, the turtles mutated into humanoids after being exposed to a toxic green goo. They are subsequently trained in martial arts by a large rat.

The turtles, who are brothers, fight crime, frequently crossing paths with a man called Shredder and his accomplices Bebop, who is a mutant warthog, and Rocksteady, who is a sort of rhino. They also encounter Krang, an alien blob-thing who lives in a robot.

While there appears to have been an increase in sewer incidents this year, this isn’t a new phenomenon. In 2015, a trainee at the New York department of environmental protection was arrested after being caught in the sewers, and last year three men were arrested after entering the sewer system in Brooklyn, allegedly in an attempt to find gold.

“God knows what they were looking for. I know for damn sure I wouldn’t be crawling through the sewers of New York, but these three were evidently looking for something,” the then New York police commissioner, Bill Bratton, told journalists at the time.

Reveron and Rodriguez’s September sojourn might have been written off as a bit of a hoot, but police were seemingly extra interested because it coincided with world leaders gathering at the UN, some of them staying at swanky hotels close to where the two men went underground.

Brian Kennedy, an attorney for Reveron, dismissed those concerns when he spoke to NBC News.

“It seems like not much of a case,” Kennedy told NBC News. “I understand that it is strange that it’s alleged he went [into the sewer]. But there’s no connection to the UN or the appearance of Netanyahu or any other kind of nefarious scheme.”

It’s both strange and dangerous, Rob Wolejsza, a spokesperson for New York’s department of environmental protection, previously told the Guardian. Wolejsza said it was “both illegal and extremely dangerous” to go into the sewers, adding: “Sewers can contain numerous hazards, including noxious and potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding risks and confined spaces. For these reasons, members of the public should never enter a pipe, drain, catch basin, manhole or outfall.”

Whether people will listen remains to be seen. On the same day Reveron and Rodriguez were arrested, another three men were spotted climbing out of a sewer at 4.30am in Bensonhurst, south Brooklyn.

ABC7NY reported that police found a shovel in the sewer, but the men got away.