Detectives examine interior of Cross Bay Blvd. store front office where robbers smashed through a wall to get into a Sovereign Bank and loot the vault.
Taking a page from the blockbuster movie "The Bank Job," crooks smashed their way into a Howard Beach bank vault over the Easter weekend, grabbing cash and emptying safe deposit boxes.
The real-life thieves bored their way into the Sovereign Bank on Queens' Cross Bay Blvd. by breaking through a concrete wall from the building next door, police said.
"This is more sophisticated than the average burglary," one law enforcement source said.
The crew made off with an estimated $400,000 in cash and gems, sources said. The FBI and NYPD are investigating.
Like the based-on-a-true story movie "The Bank Job" - where crooks rented a storefront two doors from a Lloyds Bank in London, dug a hole and tunneled through the sewer with a jackhammer - the Howard Beach crooks left an unholy mess behind.
Though cops doubt the Howard Beach crooks looked like the movie's stars - Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows - they managed to break into an educational center at 162-30 Cross Bay Blvd., sources said.
Authorities think the crooks might have pinched a front door key from the educational center in a St. Patrick's Day break-in - making a copy and then putting it back.
Once inside the center, the thieves hung a shower curtain in the hallway so the light from their equipment wouldn't shine through to the street.
"One of the detectives asked us if we had a shower curtain hanging in the hallway. We said no," said Carol Verdi, who manages the education center for HeartShare Human Services of New York.
The crew clogged the education center's sink, flooding both the nonprofit center and the Sovereign Bank next door, and possibly short-circuiting the bank's alarms.
In the watery mess, the crew may have played out a scene from another flick, "Home Alone," where two burglars flood a house.
The FBI had to bring in special evidence recovery crews to try to save evidence from the flood.
The thieves also sprayed the center's conference room with fire extinguishers - another attempt to cover their tracks.
Once inside the bank, the crew apparently had all the time they needed to smash through a second concrete wall to get at the bank's vault - and customers' safe deposit boxes.
The storefront that houses the bank and the education center is owned by Frank Russo, of Russo's On the Bay restaurant, authorities said.
The NYPD was investigating whether the Sovereign Bank robbery had any connection with a crook dressing up as an armored car deliveryman and stealing $26,000 from Telemundial, Inc. in Long Island City about 11:30 a.m. yesterday morning, sources said.
Cops arrested one suspect in the Long Island City caper.
