More than four years ago, organized criminals took advantage of the racial justice protests, looting, and fires in Philadelphia that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and blew up at least 50 cash machines.
Along with firecrackers and other explosions set off on May 30, 2020, and over the next few days, the ATM attacks alarmed residents and led to unfounded rumors that the booms were caused by sonic weapons used by law enforcement.
In reality, at least some of the hundreds of startling noises were M100 or M250 explosive devices jammed into ATMs and set off by individuals hoping to get away with the money stored inside. At least one person died trying to blow up an ATM.
There were more protests and more looting that October, after police shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old Black man who was apparently experiencing a mental health crisis. ATM thieves again took the opportunity to strike.
Last week, Yeadon resident Cushmir McBride, who blew up several Wawa ATMs in late October and early November 2020, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison, said Jacqueline Romero, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
“McBride and crew carried out a string of violent and dangerous crimes, looking to cash in with a bang,” Romero said last Wednesday. “Whether you rob a bank with a note, a store with a gun, or an ATM with an explosive, you’re committing a serious federal crime and should expect to be caught and prosecuted.”
People have been attacking ATMs in various ways for years. But as an ATM security expert said at the time, the string of bombings in Philly four years ago was an unprecedented event, and it appears not to have been repeated anywhere in the country since then.
Axes, crowbars, and a getaway driver
In the first of several incidents, the 25-year-old McBride and two others — Nasser McFall, 25, of Claymont, Del., and Kamar Thompson, 37, of Philadelphia — broke into a Target in Port Richmond on October 28, 2020, and blew up an ATM, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
Members of that group did the same thing at a Wawa on Richmond Street the next day, a Wawa in North Philly two days after that, and a Wawa in Claymont a few days later, prosecutors say. They then moved onto Wells Fargo ATMs, blowing up machines in Philadelphia in December and the following March.
They reportedly used hammers, axes, saws, and crowbars to carry out the attacks while disguising themselves by wearing masks and construction clothing. They also used a lookout and getaway driver at several of the robberies. Their takings varied from $40,000 to over $150,000 per incident, and totaled about $417,000 by the end, per the U.S. Attorney’s office.
A team of law enforcement officials tracked down the suspects: the Philadelphia police and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives led the effort, with assistance from Delaware State Police and Upper Chichester police.
Thompson pleaded guilty in November 2021 to six counts of “maliciously damaging property used in interstate commerce by means of an explosive,” conspiracy, and other offenses, and is awaiting sentencing. McFall pleaded guilty to five counts in June 2022 and was sentenced to 78 months in prison and three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay back $256,083.
McBride pleaded guilty to several counts this past January, Romero said. This month a judge gave him 90 months’ imprisonment, three years of supervised release, and ordered $417,463 in restitution and a $300 special assessment for setting off the explosives.
“It’s a tragic case,” his defense lawyer Lawrence Bozzelli said. “He was really trying to get money to help support his family and he regrets deeply what happened.”
McBride also claims he was severely beaten by guards at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia as punishment for refusing a COVID vaccination and giving food to a fellow prisoner who is a January 6 defendant. His family held a protest over the alleged abuse outside the Center City detention facility in January 2022.
Bomb-making as a business
The feds have prosecuted a number of other people for blowing up ATMs in the Philly area in 2020 or making explosives for that purpose.
During the George Floyd unrest, city resident David Elmakayes blew up a sidewalk ATM on East Westmoreland Street in North Philadelphia and was quickly arrested, prosecutors said. He reportedly had three more explosive devices and firearms with him. In June 2022 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and three years of supervised release.
Police found devices at “numerous post-blast scenes” in summer and fall 2020 that appeared to have been manufactured by David Perez, a Philadelphia man who had previously been convicted of making explosives, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
Last year he pleaded guilty to running a bomb-making business, causing extensive damage to a public school in Fairhill by setting off an explosive, possessing guns and PCP, and defrauding a bank. He was sentenced to about nine years in prison and ordered to pay restitution.
During the June 2020 protests, police also arrested Talib Crump, of Frankford, who prosecutors say was advertising sticks of dynamite on Instagram. When law enforcement agents contacted Crump to make a purchase, he allegedly instructed them on how to properly place the dynamite, said he’d blown up several ATMs, and admitted to stealing about $8,500 from one of the machines. They ended up seizing some 42 sticks of homemade dynamite from Crump’s home.
“Talib Crump used the civil unrest happening in Philadelphia and throughout the Commonwealth as a cynical opportunity to make a profit,” then-attorney general Josh Shapiro said. “I will not stand for anyone hijacking a righteous movement for personal gain.”
The outcome of Crump’s case is unclear, but, according to a federal prisons database, he was released in April 2023.
ATMs are an easy and increasingly common target
Back in 2020, David Lott, a payments risk expert at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, told WHYY that the string of explosions was unprecedented.
In the U.S., it’s more common for criminals to wrench cash machines off their moorings and take them elsewhere to be dismantled, he said. In addition, other types of scams using card skimmers and cameras on ATMs are far more lucrative to criminals and costly to banks.
There are about half a million ATMs in the country, and probably fewer than 50 are blown up each year, Lott said.
“The Philadelphia situation is a major change from the norm in that regard,” he said. “That is highly unusual. Not just anybody can go out and acquire these explosives, and you have to have some level of knowledge to best utilize those.”
Physical attacks on ATMs have been much more common in Europe, where gangs pump devices full of flammable gases and blast off their front panels, and in Brazil, where heavily armed attackers would routinely blow up both cash machines and bank vaults.
However, thieves do still try to blow up cash machines from time to time in Philadelphia and other American cities.
Last October, for example, the ATF and a police bomb squad were called out to a Chinese restaurant at 57th and Arch streets after a man tried to blow up an ATM there using an “M-device” in a cardboard tube. An employee was at the business at the time but was not hurt.
“The problem we have is that ATM crime is very easy and it’s very low-risk,” David Tente, the president of the ATM Security Association, told 6ABC at the time. While explosions remain rare, “ATM crime in general is up 600% since 2019. The pandemic was a real boost. We saw a big increase, especially in physical crime during that period.”
