Florida Man Who Punched ATM For ‘Giving Too Much Cash’ Arrested

A 23-year-old Florida man was arrested after he told police he punched an ATM machine in November because it dispensed too much cash, reports said Monday.

Police charged Michael Joseph Oleksik of Merritt Island on Friday with criminal mischief for beating up a Wells Fargo ATM in Cocoa, Florida, nearly a month after the investigation into the incident of a disturbance at a Wells Fargo bank branch in Cocoa. Bank officials stated the attack and assault on the machine caused at least $5,000 in damages.

Authorities claimed Oleksik was seen on surveillance video standing at the ATM on Nov. 29, pummeling the electronic teller’s touch screen and continuously striking it from time to time, according to USA Today.

Soon after the attack, Oleksik reportedly called the bank and told a manager he pummeled the ATM because he was “angry the ATM was giving him too much money and he did not know what to do,” according to officials. Oleksik also added he was in a hurry for work so had to be quick and apologized for the damage to the bank's ATM.

Wells Fargo then contacted the Cocoa Police Department and asked them to press charges against him. Oleksik was arrested Friday and booked into the Brevard County Jail Complex in Sharpes, Florida. He was later released after posting bond, Huffington Post reported.

The incident marked a continuation of the sometimes strange and unpleasant relationship between people and ATM machines.

In July, a repairman working inside an ATM in Corpus Christi, Texas, accidentally got stuck inside a room connected to the machine.

He was then forced to scrawl a message on a slip of paper and stick it in through the receipt slot in order to ask for help from people. Customers at a Bank of America branch in Corpus Christi received the slip of paper instead of a cash receipt.

“Please Help Im stuck here and I don’t have my phone please call my boss,” the note read in part.

“Apparently he left his cellphone and the swipe card he needed to get out of the room outside in his truck,” Corpus Christi police Lt. Chris Hooper said, according to a Huffington Post report then.

The man was stuck in the room for around two hours. New anchors joked while describing the situation and reportedly police also did not believe it at first.

“We come out here, and sure enough we can hear a little voice coming from the machine,” Corpus Christi Police officer Richard Olden had said. “So we are thinking this is a joke. It’s got to be a joke.”

Police then rescued the repairman by kicking down the door to the room where he was trapped. No one was injured or harmed during the time span of the incident.

People's encounters with ATMs have not always been unpleasant though. In November 2016, a man in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, hit a jackpot at an ATM when the machine suddenly churned out dozens of bank notes when he had already withdrawn his money and was putting away his wallet. It was not clear why the ATM dispensed the money or if the man actually kept the money.