“Jackpotting” hits Colorado with foreign software scam

Two Venezuelan men went on a crime spree through Colorado, Idaho and Utah, cracking into seven ATMs and using software to trick the machines into spitting out as much as $98,000 at a time.

The alleged crooks used a technique common in Latin America and Europe but very new in the U.S. called “jackpotting.” Thieves use a key or violently crack open the exterior of an ATM and then insert software into the machine’s computer hard drive instructing it to purge all of its cash.

Isaac Rafael Jorge Romero and Jose Alejandro Osorio Echegaray managed to siphon $380,200 in $20s and $50s between Oct. 8 and Nov. 15, according to court records. Although they were possibly the first criminals to employ the new method in the U.S., it hasn’t taken long for a warning to crisscross the country.

“This is an international crime, but it’s just coming to the U.S.,” the defendants’ Miami attorney Carlos Pelayo Gonzalez said Friday. “I imagine based on this there are going to upgrades of ATMs across the

country.”

As successful as the Romero and Echegaray were in siphoning ATMs, they weren’t very sophisticated, Gonzalez said.

“My guys are idiots,” he said. The defendants, who never encountered ATM cameras in Venezuela, stood without disguises in front of the ATMs.

“The people standing behind the ATMs are very low on the totem pole,” Gonzalez said. The programmers who wrote the software and lead the enterprise don’t do the dirty work, he said.

According to Denver federal records, Romero and Echegaray hit banks and credit unions in Breckenridge, Basalt, Denver, Parker, St. George, Utah, and Twin Falls, Idaho, in just over a month.

Their spree ended ignominiously when their car broke down in Wyoming and a state trooper pulled them over and smelled marijuana, reports by Wyoming newspapers said. The law enforcement officer found about $100,000 in cash.

The two are locked up, awaiting trial on eight counts of bank theft, conspiracy and unauthorized access of a computer in Denver U.S. District Court.