A brazen thug impersonated a gun-toting cop to swipe $24,000 worth of MetroCards from the manager and two employees of a Queens check-cashing business, police said yesterday.
Around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, the 34-year-old manager and two workers were leaving 123 Check Cashing, at 188-34 Linden Boulevard in St. Albans, police said.
The trio piled into a car together to head home – but all the while, they were being watched by the thief, police said.
The perp was driving what looked like an unmarked police car – a nondescript four-door sedan that the victims said was either gray or silver.
The car even had flashing police-type lights – which the suspect used to persuade the employees of the check-cashing business to pull over.
Then the bandit, who wore an NYPD baseball cap, got out of the car, brandished a gun, and ordered the workers into his own car so he could drive them back to the check-cashing shop.
Back at the store, he ordered one of the workers, a woman, into the shop to get cash from a safe. He held the other two workers hostage at gunpoint in his car.
Much to the thief’s dismay, the woman emerged a few minutes later only with $24,000 worth of MetroCards, cops said.
He told the woman to go back to the store yet again to get money.
When the employee and one of her colleagues, another woman, went back into the store, they stayed in the business for a while.
That led the fake cop to drive off with the store manager, a 34-year-old man, who had been forced to stay behind in the car.
The crook drove his hostage over the Queens border into Brooklyn. He released the manager unharmed at Metropolitan Avenue and Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg.
The phony policeman, described only as a black man in his 30s, remains at large. He wasn’t carrying a police badge, and it wasn’t clear if his gun was real, said cops.
There have been no similar police-impersonation crimes reported in the city recently, said cops.
None of the victims of the crime wanted to talk about it yesterday.
A woman who answered the phone at 123 Check Cashing declined to comment and the supervisor there did not immediately return calls.