A trio of men in their 30s and 40s who visited The Eagle, a New York City bar dedicated to the gay leather subculture, were robbed of thousands of dollars in separate heists in the fall of 2022.
The thieves incapacitated each victim and used their faces to open phones and access funds, which were then transferred out of the accounts, the New York Police Department indicated Thursday.
Police did not identify the victims.
The current theory of the case is that the victims were enticed away from the club by a perpetrator or perpetrators to a third party waiting to complete the scheme.
“What we think is happening with this scheme is they’re being lured away from the club. … And then, once they get into a car to do whatever it is that they’re going to do, at some point or another, they don’t know what happened when they wake up,” NYPD 10th Precinct Capt. Robert Gault said at a community meeting, according to NBC News.
The suspects are not thought to be targeting the gay community specifically; authorities have connected the suspects in these cases to two other robberies at the Hotel Chantelle in November and December 2022, where the same modus operandi was used.
Capt. Gault said police located a vehicle of interest, its license plates, and at least one phone number of interest in connection with the unidentified suspects. No arrests have been made and the investigation is continuing.
In January, The Eagle uploaded security footage of two men to a since-deleted Instagram post, warning patrons to avoid them because “they have someone in a car (around nearby street corners) waiting for these guys to bring someone,” according to NBC News.
Those two men were reported to authorities at the time of the post.
