Mysterious men who are “up to no good” have been wandering the vast sewer system of New York City, and city officials warned potential copycats Tuesday of the dangers they would face exploring Gotham’s treacherous underground.
There were at least three documents incursions into the sewers since May 5 in the largest U.S. city, with no injuries reported so far, officials said.
“Entering the sewer system is both illegal and extremely dangerous,” a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection said Tuesday.
“Sewers can contain many hazards, including harmful and potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding hazards and confined spaces. For these reasons, members of the public should never enter a pipe, drain, sump, manhole or outfall.”
New video shows a group opening a manhole cover on May 5, 2026, just before 2 a.m. in Astoria, Queens.AKI CoachAuto repair shop owner Aki Jakupovic was working at 2 a.m. on May 5 in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens when he made eye contact with sewer explorers as they descended.
“I knew they were up to no good,” Jakupovic told NBC News on Tuesday, recalling the strange encounter outside his store. “They just looked up, looked down and carried on like I wasn’t there. You know, I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff in New York, but this was really something.”
He and his team called 911 and moved customers’ cars, parked outside, into the garage.
“I didn’t know if these guys were going to come to me to try to start something,” Jakupovic said.
Responding officers told Jakupovic to do exactly what he did if he saw these men going into hiding again: don’t get involved and call the police.
“The cop told me, ‘Don’t act like Batman, like you’re not Batman, just call the cops,'” the night owl mechanic said. “Yeah, that’s what we did.”
There have been at least two other incursions into New York City sewers since the Jakupovic encounter, both in Brooklyn last week.
Unauthorized entry into sewers is a potential crime, although there were no immediate arrests or evidence of a threat to public health, officials said.
Investigators are pursuing their main theory that the group is “scouring the system looking for valuables that end up in the wastewater,” a senior law enforcement official told NBC News on Monday.
“We need to know who they were, what they were doing,” said John Monaghan, a law enforcement analyst and retired NYPD captain, also warning about sewer visitors and their potential imitators.
“They could be electrocuted, they could be overcome, there are gas lines there, there are power lines there.”