A trio of burglars who broke into a Canberra cafe probably couldn't believe their luck when they found the till open, but their hearts are sure to have sunk after they saw what was inside.
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CCTV footage posted on the Niugini Arabica cafe Facebook page shows the burglars smashing through a window shortly before 4am on March 20.
The hooded trio rummage around in the Duffy cafe, finding a post-it note in the cash register that reads "HAHA, NO MONEY". The note also includes a crude illustration and profanity letting the burglars know exactly what the cafe thinks of their efforts.
The burglars, who the cafe described on Facebook as "three blind mice", repeatedly return to the till before leaving largely empty-handed.
"Apart from stealing the work mobile phone, the thieves managed to walk right past the tip jar and get away with a 2kg of our finest single origin roasted beans," the cafe's post says.
"At least they have great taste in coffee."
Niugini Arabica owner Theo Levantis said a former employee had come up with the idea of leaving a note in the till after a break-in about five years ago.
Since then, he said, the cafe had been burgled another five times, though the perpetrators never managed to find much worth stealing.
"That's probably the third incarnation [of the note], but it's pretty true to the original," Mr Levantis said.
"It's a source of great irritation to us that we have to keep dealing with this, but the reality is that if you have a business in Canberra, you're going to get broken into.
"The only way to cope with it is to turn it into something funny."
Levantis and his cafe co-owners have long enjoyed outsmarting would-be burglars, having posted a video of a 2016 break-in on YouTube.
Paired with music from The Benny Hill Show, the video, titled "Bob the Burglar 3" shows a man breaking into the cafe with an axe. He takes nothing but a first-aid bandage, which gets caught on the door and left behind on his way out.
An ACT Policing spokesperson confirmed police were investigating the March 20 burglary, but declined to comment further.
