Thieves toiled for almost an hour with a stolen excavator to dig two cash machines out of a bank branch in the northeastern town of Kuala Terengganu Tuesday.

But they were forced to flee empty-handed when the excavator's digging arm got stuck in the ceiling of the bank, Malaysian newspapers reported Wednesday.

A week ago, thieves in northwest Penang state used a rope to tie an automatic teller machine to a truck and haul it through a glass wall and down a flight of stairs -- only to discover they had grabbed a check-deposit machine by mistake.

In another recent case, thieves loaded a cash machine onto a truck but abandoned it when they discovered it had no cash.