New York’s Summer Youth Employment Program (S.Y.E.P.) is a well-intentioned program. Young people between the ages of 14 and 24 are able to participate. Many of the employees come from low-income backgrounds.
For many of the participants in the program, this is the first kind of job they have ever had. Thanks to the S.Y.E.P., they are able to build new skills, experience a real workplace, and gain experience that will help them as they move on to formal careers in the future.
The Program is Like a Modern Apprenticeship Program
The Summer Youth Employment Program (S.Y.E.P.) helps to bridge the gap between how higher- and lower-income youths in New York are able to chart out their future. Through the program, young people can choose to work in a field they are interested in for the future.
Once they go to work, they also get a feel for the modern workplace and develop relationships with mentors. The overarching goal of the program is to make sure that more young New Yorkers are ready to hit the workforce with skills and experience.
Many of the Workers Are Paid With a Debit Card
Since many of the people working in the program don’t have a bank account, they are instead given a refillable debit card. After they finish their work for the week, the money they earned is loaded onto the refillable card.
Participants are paid the $16.50 New York State minimum wage for their work, and they are allowed to work up to 25 hours per week. Once their pay is added onto the card, they can access their cash at several ATMs around New York City.
These Kind of Programs Can Invite Criminal Activity
The S.Y.E.P. program is massive, and anytime an organization gets this big, there is an opportunity for fraud. The people participating in the program are young and can also be taken advantage of by enterprising people.
The internet has changed the way that scammers work and, in some cases, has made it much easier for con artists to take advantage of unsuspecting victims. This happened recently in a scam involving debit cards, the S.Y.E.P. program, and ATMs.
Scammers Were Able to Steal More than $17 Million From NYC ATMs
New York City has one of the largest work programs for young people in the country. And these young people have been paid with a card that can be used at ATMs to access their paychecks.
Scammers, though, have found a loophole to access much more cash than they are actually entitled to. While New York was eventually able to shut down the scam, perpetrators were able to access more than $17 million in cash before that happened. Cops are now on the lookout for those participating in the scheme.
It Is Not Known How Scammers Discovered the Glitch
For some reason, people who had access to the cards were able to pull out tens of thousands of dollars from ATMs. Once people figured out the cards were giving them access to unlimited cash, word spread like wildfire.
Stores reported that people were pulling money from ATMs for hours. Since the cards had a $200 limit per transaction, people would just stay at the cash box until it stopped paying out. One ATM CEO said that he had $43,000 withdrawn from one single machine.
The Scam Was Heavily Driven by Social Media
The reason why the perpetrators were able to get their hands on so much money is that information about the glitch on the cards was spread via social media rapidly. And the message went viral on social media.
While many people seeing videos about the scam could not get involved in the scheme, the videos were widely shared, and after some time, many of the thousands of people who did work in S.Y.E.P. got word about what the cards were capable of doing at cash machines.
A Massive Amount of Money Was Taken in a Short Period of Time
Thanks in part to how it went viral on social media, the New York City Police Department’s Financial Crimes Task Force was able to shut down the scam after only two days. The companies that owned the ATMs also received reports about just how much money was coming out of their machines.
Perpetrators took all of the money between July 13th and July 15th of 2025. They took an extraordinary amount of cash, a total of $17 million. It is unclear how the money will be repaid to the ATM companies.
Some S.Y.E.P. Chose to Sell Their Cards for Big Bucks
As news about the scam began to spread on social media, some enterprising users offered to buy cards from anyone who held one in New York City, and they were willing to offer a large enough sum to convince people to get rid of theirs, as some cards were sold for as much as $1,000.
Of course, once the buyers got their hands on the cards, they were able to take out much more than that amount once they hit an ATM. There seemed to be no limit on how much the card could pull out of a machine; they just did so until the ATM ran out of cash.
Conclusion
The organization and the police department are going to have to answer many questions about the incident, including how the cards gained unlimited access to cash and how the scammers found out that they could take advantage.
It will also be hard to round up suspects, as many of the scammers were using cards that were not issued in their names. This investigation will likely be long-running, and some perpetrators may get away with the crime.