Newly surfaced videos show brazen thieves stealing cash from a Fulton Transit Center bubble tea shop – as the retail giant that runs the hub threatens to leave over rising crime.
In one video obtained by The Post, a man is seen in the Fulton Gong Cha in November 2022 poking his head around the plastic barriers surrounding the register. The thief then reaches over, opens the register and leans over the counter to seize a handful of cash, the video shows.
He slips his hand out just as an employee runs up, then takes off — leaving bewildered workers in his wake.
Another video, recorded in December 2023, shows a man waltz up the same counter and calmly snatch the tip jar when the barista turns to make a drink. The thief is then seen casually strolling away.
The store manager said he reported both incidents to the NYPD, but doesn’t bother anymore because there’s simply too many.
“We have security issues regularly, like once every two weeks,” the manager told The Post. “We only have one security [officer] in the entire building. We prefer to have four … with one by each door.”
The videos paint a real-time portrait of the complaints listed by Westfield Fulton Center, the massive retail manager that says it wants out of the transit hub 10 years earlier than its lease requires because crime is forcing out tenants.
The company claimed in federal court papers that homeless people and street hustlers have overrun the complex, which is also rife with vandalism because the MTA as landlord hasn’t provided adequate security.
Assaults and employee intimidation have also become more common inside the glass-and-steel building on the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway, which the MTA initially pitched as comparable in stature to Rockefeller Center or Grand Central Station, the company claimed.
There are very specific reasons the retail manager — which is a subsidiary of mammoth international commercial real estate company Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield — can break the lease but retail crime isn’t one of them, the MTA said in court filings.
The center — which connects five underground stations and a web of nine subway lines — sees up to 300,000 straphangers pass through each day, according to the MTA.
The agency asked the court to force Westfield to stay — and declare it in breach of the agreement if it does break the deal.
