The placement of an ATM in woods off a dirt road in Deer Isle was a joke, not the aftermath of a crime, a dispatcher for the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office said Friday.
The office had been investigating the discovery of the ATM on Wednesday in woods about six-tenths of a mile off a dirt road, Dexter Farm Road, which runs off Route 15 in North Deer Isle.
[An ATM was found in the Maine woods. No one knows where it came from.]
Police were investigating whether the ATM, a smaller model commonly used in convenience stores, had been discarded in the aftermath of a burglary or robbery, but police said they had no recent reports of ATM thefts.
Police suspected the matter was someone’s attempt at humor right from the start. Most machines targeted by thieves are torn up to get at the safes within, police said, but this one was intact.
According to a report in the Portland Press Herald, a woman telephoned the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday afternoon to say she had placed the cash-dispensing machine as a joke to mess with her neighbors.