In this case, the defendant is a self-styled Hispanic civil rights advocate. He threatened to wreak one-half million dollars’ worth of damage to Citibank’s automatic teller machines in an attempt to induce Citibank to give money to several organizations.
A New York Criminal Lawyer said that on the evening of June 4, 1984, thirty-one Citibank 24-hour banking facilities in the Bronx and Manhattan were vandalized, and glue and other unidentified substances poured into the part of the automatic teller machines into which customers insert their cards to activate the machines. The damage was extensive. In all, sixty-eight machines had to be repaired.
In twenty-one of the twenty-seven Manhattan facilities, one of defendant’s two Citibank banking cards were used to enter the facility before the machines were damaged. At one location, defendant’s card was used to complete a transaction at an automatic teller machine shortly before it was vandalized. At another, a video camera recorded defendant’s entry into the facility just after one of his cards had been used to unlock the door, and moments before the machines inside were damaged. The next day, defendant, while denying responsibility, spoke to a Citibank regional manager and told him that 109 of Citibank’s automatic teller machines had been “hit” and glue poured into them. Two days later, defendant told several Citibank executives that he was not asking for anything for himself, only for the “Hispanic community.” Otherwise, defendant explained, it “would be extortion.”
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