Cops busted a Staten Island “Fagin” who allegedly forced his two younger brothers, 11 and 13, to steal from Manhattan bars and restaurants – and are searching for at least two other adult handlers running the same scam right out of “Oliver Twist,” police said.
Micquel Robinson was arrested Monday and charged with burglarizing a trio of Lower Manhattan bars and restaurants, following an exclusive front-page story in The Post Sunday about the disturbing citywide trend.
“I used to come here to hustle with my brothers,” Robinson, 20, told investigators after he identified himself in surveillance video from one of the burglaries, at Rosie’s Mexican restaurant on East 2nd Street on April 15.
The video shows the 11-year-old entering the restaurant while his older brother waited outside, according to court papers.
The child then went into a private office in the basement, opened a purse took a credit card, and handed it to his older brother outside, the records show.
“When they come back out of the restaurant, I would ask how much they would get, how much money they made,” said Robinson.
In another heist, the boy walked into Italian eatery Il Buco Vita nearby on Bond Street and Third Avenue and set a bathroom trash can aflame as about 75 patrons congregated nearby, according to court documents. Staff was able to douse the flames without injury.
Prosecutors hit Robinson with charges of burglary, grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, endangering the welfare of a child and arson, court documents show.
He was immediately set free on his own recognizance because the charges were not bail-eligible.
“This is the new New York,” a law enforcement source lamented. “This is it now. The bail laws aren’t going to change.”
An order of protection for the child was issued to keep the older brother away.
The children’s mother, Francine Jones, told The Post her eldest son wasn’t directing his little brothers.
“I believe my kids are doing that on their own,” Jones, 40, said. “Nobody’s telling them to do that.”
She said her kids went into the city with other family members and were left to fend for themselves.
“That’s what it is,” said Jones, who has seven children. “They’re letting them run around by themselves and they’re too small for that.”
She said she was grounding the boys and only allowing them to go to school as a result.
The incidents began more than a year ago, business owners told The Post last week, when little scamps started to show up in their establishments asking for money for sports teams and then stealing from purses, workers — and open safes.
“The weird thing is it just feels like a modern-day ‘Oliver Twist’ story,” said a manager at the Upper East Side’s Lexington Publick, one of several of owner Jacob Rabinowitz’s watering holes hit over the past few months.
Some of the pint-sized scammers start out by pretending they are seeking donations for sports teams and convincing victims to hand over their phones for “help” with payment apps, cops said. They then siphon money from the apps, police said.
“If there’s not a lot of money in the account, they’ll just run away with the phone,” said Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny. “But if there is money in the account instead of donating $5 to the basketball team, you find yourself donating $5,000 to the basketball team.”
“Bars and restaurants are their feeding ground,” Kenny said.
When there aren’t enough customers, they start to walk around the bar, ask to use the restroom “and that’s when they’re walking down to office areas and stealing whatever they can,” Kenny said.
In one case, a family from New Jersey is known to have their children pretend to be from a sports organization to hustle money, Kenny said.
Cops are looking for them.
Police are also looking for the children and their adult handlers responsible for crimes plaguing the bars and restaurants on the Upper West Side and Upper East Side.
Meanwhile, Charles Milite, owner of Flats Fix taqueria in Union Square, gave The Post new footage showing a child bolting into his eatery on March 6, with the intent, he said, to steal $1,000.
Milite said he believed the child was the same one who stole from the uptown bars.
He said the same kids have been coming to his restaurant for over a year and there’s always a man standing outside.
He once saw them together on the subway.
“I just saw him yelling at them, cursing at them,” he said. “I don’t know what it was, but I was like, ‘Now I get it. Now I see the whole picture.’”
The law enforcement source said it’s “unfortunate” adults are using kids as “pawns.”
“These kids can’t be held responsible,” the source said. “Now this is the upbringing that they have. This is it. It’s very sad.”
