The NYPD on Monday said no busts have yet been made involving the “mole people’’ who climbed from a manhole just feet from the main entrance to Penn Station last week — terrifying the public.
“I just immediately thought, reconnaissance, 9/11,” said an Arizona tourist named Mark to The Post in packed Herald Square in Manhattan.
“If you’re an Iranian soldier, you need to cripple New York City? Under Penn Station? Under Madison Square Garden? Aren’t all the train lines crisscrossing here?”
A trio of underground scofflaws was caught on video around 4:20 a.m. Aug. 18 wearing headlamps and overalls and pulling themselves out of a sanitation and drainage manhole about 150 feet from Penn Station — just a block from Madison Square Garden — then hurriedly walking away.
A worker with nearby Penn 2 developer Vornado Realty Trust said he was aware that cops had been snooping around the tourist- and business-choked area collecting potential surveillance footage of the creepy nightcrawlers.
“The more they told me about it, the more I wanted to get transferred to another area,” the man said.
The disturbing incident was eerily similar to two “mole people” sightings in Brooklyn earlier in the year, which led to a handful of arrests involving people who cops believe were hunting for valuables.
Police have collected surveillance footage that possibly captured the latest incident to try to ID the three people using facial recognition technology and track them down to figure out what they were up to, law-enforcement sources said.
Cops only became aware of the incident Sunday after other video of the “mole people” went viral on social media.
“The NYPD is aware of the incident and is actively investigating,” the Police Department said in a statement to The Post on Monday.
“There are no arrests and the investigation is ongoing.The incident occurred on August 18, 2026 at 0419 hours at the southeast corner of West 31st Street and 7th Avenue.”
A law-enforcement source said, “There is nothing to indicate there is any criminal activity here besides trespassing.
“The manhole covers lead to the sewer system. But who knows what someone is doing down there if they are looking to cause [trouble].”
Another source called the situation “not uncommon.
“Mostly people who do this think there’s treasure. Precious metals. Lost property.
“Yes, [the sewer-hunting is] not ideal from a security standpoint. But it’s [the city Department of Environmental Protection’s] infrastructure to secure,” the source added.
A rep for the DEP, which has domain over the thousands of miles of sewers and drainage system under the Big Apple, was asked Monday by The Post about the incident but only referred to its statement Sunday, saying an inspection of the sewers revealed no damage to the infrastructure.
“Members of the public should never enter a pipe, drain, catch basin, manhole or outfall,” it said.
Law-enforcement sources said the latest “mole people” pop-up could be similar to the Brooklyn ones.
In those cases, several people were caught on camera disappearing and jumping out of manholes in Williamsburg and Gravesend in separate incidents in May, sparking an NYPD probe.
At least four people were charged with trespassing in those incidents, with law-enforcement sources telling The Post they were looking for valuables.
Other sources suggested the Manhattan incident might be part of a scheme for TikTok footage, given it was caught on film so early in the morning.
“It could be anything,” said Ari, a fashion worker in the Manhattan neighborhood. “Kind of sketchy the way they’re running away after they come out of the hole.”
