A thief has been captured slithering along the floor in a bid not to set off the motion-activated alarm system.
Surveillance footage captured the man dubbed the ‘snake burglar’ was snapped wriggling along the carpeted floor of Crown Cold Exchange in Riverside, California.
The man spent several minutes routing through the back rooms before making off with $50K in silver (around £37,000).
According to KTLA the crook also attempted to break into the drywall of a vacant storefront next door with a hammer.
This CCTV footage shows an unnamed man in a dark hoodie, dark pants and sneakers opening drawers while on the floor and taking items, then sliding out.
Store owner Ceser Meyer said: “This guy slithered in, crawled on the ground, kind of like Lt Dan-style, hand over hand, didn’t move his legs, and was able to rummage through my entire back room for a full five minutes”.
Meyer blamed his ADT alarm system for not detecting the burglary in progress.
“There’s definitely something faulty, something going on with the ADT motion detectors, because if they’re designed to detect motion, this guy is moving around a lot in all of these businesses, and ADT’s motion detectors are not picking it up,” Meyer added.
Police said that the burglar used the same method that was used in at least a half-dozen other robberies in recent months in Riverside, which is about 55 miles east of Los Angeles.
In November, a man kicked a ground-level side window of Body Tan Salon and Spa and cut through sheet rock to get in, then took off with cash in the register, according to cops.
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Surveillance footage also recorded a man wriggling into Rustic Roots hair salon on November 26, and the owner Lori Hajj said that merchandise and $8,000 from the register went missing.
Authorities are investigating whether the man who stole from the gold exchange is the same individual responsible for burglaries in November and December.
‘This Crown Gold Exchange burglary does appear to be very similar, if not the same, to the suspect in the others back in late November,’ Riverside Police spokesman Ryan Railsback told the Daily Mail on Wednesday.
‘Our detectives are following up on leads but we have not identified the suspect yet.
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