Transcription performed by LeahTranscribesJACK: This story takes place in Yonkers, which is about thirty minutes north of New York City, and what I learned about Yonkers is that almost 15% of the people who live there have ancestry that traces back to the Dominican Republic. Apparently, a lot of people migrate from the DR to Yonkers, New York, which made me wonder why.
I’ve come to understand that they move from the DR to the US for three main reasons; one, because they’re a dreamer, two, because they’re a hustler, or three, because they’re a struggler. The dreamers come chasing a bright, new future where they can get good-paying, steady work, a better life for their kids, and even legal citizenship. The hustlers don’t always follow the rules. They’re scrappy. [Intro music] They’re always on the lookout for new opportunities. They’re good at negotiating, and they’re persistent. The strugglers, man, they just want to survive. They don’t have big plans, and they’re not trying to find shortcuts. They just want to do what it takes to get by day by day.
(Intro): These are stories from the dark side of the internet. I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries.
JACK: This is a story about a guy named Alberto Yusi Lajud-Pena. He was born in the Dominican Republic, and when he was a teenager, his family immigrated to the United States, to Yonkers, New York, to be exact, which is about an hour north of New York City. By the way, Washington Heights, a neighborhood in New York City, has so many people from the DR, its nickname is Little DR. For a lot of people, being in the big city fills them up with big ideas. Opportunities seem endless anywhere you look in New York City. I’m sure Alberto took trips to the big city sometimes. I wonder how that affected him. I wonder if he wanted to be a dreamer, a hustler or a struggler. [Music] He was enrolled in Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, New York, and he found some other kids there who are also from the Dominican Republic. Like, Elvis was one of his friends. He was also born in the DR, and his parents immigrated to the US just like him, and these were the kinds of people Alberto gravitated towards as a teenager.
Yonkers alone has 30,000 residents with DR-descent, so it’s not that hard to find other people like him, people who had dreams but also had pride of where they came from. Alberto, of course, dated while he was in high school, and hooked up with girls who were also from the Dominican Republic. One of them he got serious with. He met her family. She met his family. Everyone was getting along, and they fell in love. He finished high school and then started working just basic jobs. They weren’t great, but fine as a teenager. I guess that made him a struggler. He worked hard to scrape up enough to pay the bills. Think like cashier, delivery jobs, stuff like that. This was also the case for his other friends from the DR. Elvis, for instance, he was a school bus driver and also was a delivery driver for Domino’s Pizza. But I bet Alberto dreamed about getting a better job, a job that would pay him more for his wits and his cleverness, because Alberto definitely thought he was a clever person.
Alberto went online a lot in 2012 when he was in his early twenties, and he was really good at computers, so he eventually found his way to places that most people never go; the dark web, a place where it’s not uncommon to find illegal online marketplaces, forums discussing crime, and other dark topics. He lurked around, reading what people were into, and he started to discover how some people make money online. There was an ad he spotted which was interesting. Here was the pitch; looking for reliable people for ATM runs, no experience required, clean work, fast pay. Must be trustworthy and reliable. Alberto was interested, and he had just stumbled into the world of cashers. A casher is someone who takes a stolen credit card or debit card and goes to an ATM and uses it to withdraw as much money as possible, then go to other ATMs and do it again and again until the stolen card stops working. See, thieves are stealing people’s credit cards all the time. There’s lots of ways to do it.
Obviously, you could just steal someone’s wallet or purse and then use their credit card before they report it stolen. But the way the world works today is we’re doing a lot of our purchases online using credit cards. If someone could somehow intercept those transactions and see the credit card details being used in the purchase, then you could just take those numbers and go reuse that yourself somewhere, or it’s possible to hit the motherlode and hack into a database of credit cards and steal thousands at once. See, credit cards are essentially digital money, so if you can get your hands on the credit card data, it’s just as good as if you had a physical card in your possession. The card itself is not what’s valuable. It’s the information on the card that’s worth money to the card owner or to thieves. Once thieves get credit card details, they’ll try to drain as much money from it as possible before the bank marks it stolen or turns it off and they can’t take any more out.
But it’s tricky since you can’t just transfer money from the credit card into your own bank account. That would leave a trail, and you don’t want that, and you can’t order things that just get shipped directly to your house, because then that leads the cops right to you. So, going into a store and buying giftcards or just withdrawing cash from an ATM is a clean way to drain a stolen card, ‘cause cash is king since it isn’t traceable or trackable. It’s not linked to anyone’s name, so it’s clean money. But the problem is, thieves sometimes have way more cards than they can cash out, so they hire people to do it for them. Sort of like, hey, I’ll give you these stolen credit cards; you go and try to get as much money out of them as possible, and then you keep a cut. Okay, deal. Back home in the Dominican Republic, they have a name for this; tarjeteros, which means ‘card guys’ in Spanish. Thieves, honestly. The tarjeteros in the DR drive good looking cars and flash their money around.
I wonder if Alberto saw some of these tarjeteros around the DR and thought maybe that’s what he wanted to do. After all, he would go back home every now and then and visit and see what everyone was up to. Well, for whatever reason, Alberto was in. He found someone with stolen cards and was talking to them. He didn’t know who they were. The person had good OpSec. They weren’t revealing any personal information about themselves. They just had a username. I imagine he had to prove his trustworthiness and commitment at first. So, I’m guessing the first round was just a small trial. Like, here’s a card; go pull some money out and send half of it back to us in an envelope, or something like that. I mean, that’s how it typically goes, you know? [Music] Well, however it started, after a while he earned the trust of this person that he was messaging online, and they started talking about doing bigger jobs.
This guy told Alberto that he’s working on getting a debit card that was practically unlimited, which crucially didn’t have a daily max withdrawal either, which meant Alberto could use this single card hundreds of times or even thousands of times to take as much money out of the ATMs that they would spit at him. The problem, though, is even though the card has nearly unlimited funds in it, you could only take out a little bit at a time, whatever the ATM was willing to give you. It would have been nice to just withdraw a few million dollars, but ATMs don’t work that way, and he can’t just go into the bank and ask the teller to do it. That’s just way too risky. But this supplier guy said this debit card would only be active on a specific day, which meant there was a window of time when Alberto would be able to pull as much money as he could out of this card. Alberto did the math. This could be a serious payday. If he could hit ten ATMs in an hour and do it for six hours, that’s like $50,000.
But he would only get a cut of that, I’m guessing around half. He looked at that and he’s like, okay, this is nice. I’d be happy with this kind of extra cash for a night of work. But then he got thinking. How could he hit even more ATMs in that window? If only he had more hands, more fingers to punch in the pins and insert cards, then he could do two or three machines at once. That’s when it occurred to him; maybe Elvis can help him. [Music] Elvis was his old high-school buddy who was currently working as a school-bus driver and Domino’s Pizza delivery driver, and they were in their early twenties at this point. If he could get Elvis on board, he could do twice as many ATMs. So, he called up his old friend. Alberto told Elvis about the cashing. He was probably like, I’ve got this opportunity, a chance to make a lot of money. It’s quick, safe, easy. Elvis was interested. He wanted to learn more. Alberto explained the unlimited debit card that he was going to get, that they could use that as many times as possible on a specific day and keep a cut of the money.
Elvis was in. But not only was he in; he also suggested if they got even more guys, they can make even more money. So, Alberto and Elvis started recruiting even more people to help them on this epic ATM run. There was a few other people that they knew from high school. They called them up. They were in, too. Elvis knew some other school-bus drivers and asked them. They were game. They eventually had a group of eight guys all ready to run the ATMs. There was Alberto and Elvis and their friends, Amir, Jose, Yael, Chung, Juan, and Evan, a bunch of twenty-something-year-old Dominican guys, immigrants. None of them had any serious criminal records, but now all of them were hustlers who all thought they were clever, smart, and wanted to make some money illegally. Alberto had the plans. He explained to everyone, look, when you steal someone’s debit card, you don’t actually get their debit card. You get the numbers on it. Like, there’s a 16-digit number, an expiration date, and a CVV code.
With this information, you can encode that onto a blank card. So, they got some blank cards and a writer and started getting ready. His hookup gave him the debit card details and the date for when it would be enabled, a single card that can be used unlimited times. Holding it in their hands, they must have imagined its potential. ATMs can only dish out so much money before you hit the ATM limit or the ATM runs out of cash. So, they can’t just go to one. They have to hit as many different ones as they can. But to have a card that can continually pull out as much money as they wanted must have felt like a magic wand in their hands, or a magic card. [Music] He handed each of them their card, all identical, plain white with a black stripe on the back. It didn’t look like much. He told them what the pin number was, told them to memorize it. Alberto and his boys were holding cards that were essentially free passes to as much money as they could possibly want. Where was it all coming from, though?
Well, they didn’t really know, and they didn’t really care, but they were ready to pull out as much as they could. Some didn’t believe this was going to work, but others were getting really hyped. So, they started planning out their route. They were going to go to New York City for this, one of the biggest cities in the world, where there are tens of thousands of ATMs and millions of people everywhere. It’ll be easy to blend in and find targets and spread out. They did some research and discovered that some ATMs let them withdraw $800, and that’s the ATM limit, not the card limit. So, find an ATM, withdraw as quickly as you can, do it a couple times, then get out. Go to another. But don’t be too obvious or raise suspicion. If someone is around, just do it once. Otherwise you’ll stand out stuffing a backpack with a wad of cash. Some of the guys thought this is going to be easy, but other guys were wondering, wait, isn’t someone going to notice us? Good point.
After you hit an ATM, don’t just use the one right next to it. Even though you’ll want to run to the next ATM and do that again and again, you might become obvious, so you gotta take a little walk. Act normal, keep an eye over your shoulder, make sure you’re clear, and then hit another ATM. But don’t take too long, either. We’re working against the clock. We’ve only got a few hours to pull out as much as possible. That’s it. So, be fast and cautious. There’s an art to this cashing thing, you see? All the planning was making everyone excited and a bit nervous, but they had to wait for December 21, 2012 to do the heist. It was only on that day that these cards would work. It was literally the perfect day for the heist. The day in December was Friday, so if they started after 5:00 p.m., everyone at the banks would be going home for the weekend, and they’d have the ATMs to themselves, and barely anyone around to watch.
But that wasn’t all; the week after would be Christmas, so many bank employees were taking their Christmas breaks and holiday vacations. They’d be understaffed, which would make it easier to not get noticed. I imagine the excitement that everyone must have had leading up to this, thinking about their route through the city, the plan, the money they could get from all this. It was starting to feel real. Alberto, Elvis, they all went back to their jobs, driving busses or working at Kmart, doing deliveries, waiting and worrying, daydreaming at the register, or staring blankly at the road, thinking over the plan again and again, knowing that soon, if they really could pull it off, they might have enough money to live the life they really wanted. I wonder how Alberto woke up on that day of December 21 when you know you’re going to commit a bank heist that night. Do you just roll out of bed like a normal day? The plan was for everyone to get into Manhattan alone.
They wanted to be clever and not be seen together, just in case. Everyone would stay in communication by text. Alberto and his guys got into town one by one. Elvis had to leave work early in order to make it in time, and he was still wearing his Domino’s Pizza hat by the time he got to his starting point in Midtown Manhattan. Alberto was checking his phone, waiting for the signal from his supplier. Everyone was ready. The guy who gave him the cards would tell him when to start. Bing, just on time. Alberto got a text message that said, it’s go time, and he sent everyone else the message. The clock had started. [Music] All at once these eight cashers from Yonkers walked up to ATMs at banks spread across the city. The lobbies were closed, but the ATMs weren’t. Alberto walked up to one carrying an empty backpack. He looked around. The coast was clear. He looked up. A camera was pointing right at him. Breathe. Play it cool. He put the card in. What was the pin? Oh, yeah.
He typed it in. The screen was loading. Pin was accepted. Nice. It’s a good start. Time to try the first withdraw. Enter a custom amount, $800. Accept the fee. Transaction processing. Processing, processing. Come on, is it always this slow? But then — approved. Money started dispensing. Ah, easy money. He grabbed it from the machine. Phew. There it was, $800. It felt good. This is really happening. But he quickly stuffed it in his bag, pulled his card from the machine, and did it again. After doing it a couple times on this ATM, he left. A few thousand dollars was now in his backpack. Act normal. Don’t panic. He walked slowly. How do you tell if someone’s watching you? It’s hard not to be paranoid. Thousands of dollars, a month’s pay stolen, and it’s in his bag. This wasn’t a trial run anymore. This was really happening. He checked his watch. No time to spare.
He went to another bank and he did it again; got to the ATM, inserted the card, entered the pin, withdraw $800, complete the transaction, rinse and repeat. ATM, card, pin, withdraw, repeat. At the same time, his friends were doing the same thing all over New York City, blending in with the crowds, moving calmly but quickly. An hour passed, two hours. The bills were piling up in their bags, and they were having to make sure to keep it zipped tight. They didn’t want to accidentally spill $10,000 out on the sidewalk. That would have caused chaos. Like clockwork, just like they talked about, each of them cashed ATM after ATM. They took the money, repeated, got out, then acted normal, took a walk, hit a new ATM, repeat. Don’t rush, but go fast. Time is ticking. Before they knew it, they were getting the hang of this, and their backpacks were starting to feel heavy and full. This was a lot more money than any of them had ever seen before in one place, at least. It was all coming together.
Bing. At two and a half hours into the operation, Alberto got a text. It was his supplier telling him, that’s enough, stop, get out of there. Supposedly, the guy who gave him the cards had visibility into all that Alberto and his crew was doing, and he could see all the money that they had collected and felt like the operation was complete. So, Alberto told everyone else, time’s up. Everyone go home. Everyone went back to Yonkers with backpacks full of cash. Once they got back to Yonkers, Alberto and his friend counted the cash; $382,000. Wow. I imagine they all stared at the money and cracked open a couple beers to celebrate, to let off some stress. All this money wasn’t for them, though. The guy who gave him the cards wanted his cut. They got to keep about half of it and send the other half to their supplier. [Music] Now, criminals have a lot of creative ways to move money around the world. You can invest and transfer cryptocurrencies or move it through a complicated network of bank accounts or money mules, but cash is king and clean.
So, why launder it when it’s already clean? No need to make a trail. Just bring the cash to the boss. But this was going to be tricky since the boss wanted Alberto to deliver the cash himself to Eastern Europe. Specifically, they were told to bring around $200,000 to Bucharest, Romania, and then they can keep the rest. Okay, so Alberto had to deliver it, but he didn’t want to go alone, so he got Elvis and Amir to go with him to Romania. But this must have been some adventure. How do you transport $200,000 in cash across the ocean like that? You probably don’t put it all in your checked luggage. It probably can’t all fit in the carry-on, so they had to split it up among three of them and somehow make their way through TSA and onto a plane, all without spilling out or looking too suspicious, and that’s just the cash. What about all their other travel items like clothes and toothbrushes? Packing for this trip must have been interesting for these three guys in their twenties, who have probably never been to Europe before, with $200,000 in cash in tow.
They make it to Bucharest, though, and carry their $200,000 in cash to the destination. They meet with their handler. It wasn’t the guy who gave him the cards. Of course not. Whoever he was seemed to be the mastermind, and he was good at OpSec, staying private. This guy they met with was just a handler. So, they hand him the cash, and that was it. He disappeared with the money. Job was done, though, and the boss was happy. Phew. Time to get out of Bucharest and head back home and party, since back home waiting for them was their half of the money, almost $200,000 to split amongst themselves. So, they get back home and split it eight ways. Alberto got more because he was leading this crew, and he had to buy cards and writers and plane tickets and organize everything. [Music] But even though it was a nice payday, it wasn’t enough to make everyone quit their jobs at Kmart and Domino’s Pizza, but this made them dream bigger.
If they could do this a few more times, then, yeah, it would be enough to quit work and live comfortably with everything they ever wanted; fancy cars, a nice place to stay. Alberto married the girl that he fell in love with and would go with her to the DR to visit her family and his family there. I’m sure he got her something nice after this, but I’m not sure if she knew where this money came from. There was good news; the boss guy was very pleased with these boys. They followed directions perfectly, got loads of cash, and delivered it personally to Romania. The boss guy definitely wanted to work with them again, and a few months later asked them, so, you want to do it again? [Music] Alberto was like, hell yeah. The boss guy was like, okay, but this is going to be a bigger one. Alberto’s like, all right, tell me more. The boss was like, okay, well, I cut you off at two and a half hours last time. This time you can go all night long if you want. Alberto started doing the math.
Let’s see, they stole $380,000 in two and a half hours. So, multiply that by, what, four, five, six times? This was looking good. So, Alberto asked the crew, and they were all ready for round two, and they all thought that they’d be more efficient this time, too. They were smarter now, more clever, faster, bolder, and were better hustlers now. Alberto told his boss his crew was in, and we’re all ready. The boss sent him the card details. Same thing; an unlimited debit card. Go make copies. He got the pin and distributed the cards to the crew, and was told what date it would be turned on, February 19, 2013. The eight people in the crew were more prepared this time than before. They had better ideas for routes through the city and ways to go faster, how to handle large amounts of money, and the excitement grew as it came closer to the date. On February 19, 2013, all eight of them took the one-hour trip from Yonkers to New York City with the goal of trying to steal over a million dollars this time.
Jose was one of the guys in Alberto’s crew. I took a look at his Facebook. He’s a family man. He’s doing all kinds of stuff with his wife and kids at the time. In fact, most of these guys had a family, and I’m not sure if the wives or girlfriends knew what they were up to. I mean, after all, this was supposed to be a top-secret mission, right? Because if your plan is to rob banks for over a million dollars, you’ve got to be very careful who you tell right? So, this guy, Jose, was twenty-four years old on the day of their heist. He came dressed in a black winter jacket over a white shirt, black pants, a black beanie. He bought a bigger backpack for this one. He ditched his old back-to-school-style backpack and got a bigger camping-style backpack, and it was totally empty as he rode to the city. He was planning to fill it all the way up by spending the whole night stealing more money than he’d ever earned in his whole life at that point. This was his second time doing this, and he was pretty serious about it this time.
These men all arrived in New York City and were spread all over the city. They were standing waiting for the signal from Alberto to get started. Bing, there it was. It’s go time. Jose started uptown at Morningside Heights. The first transaction is always just to see if the card works, and it did. It worked perfect, just like before. With that, the heist was on. [Beeping] Five withdrawals, and Jose left the bank, $2,400 in his bag. [Music] It started out just as he planned, and he was faster and better this time. He started walking south, down Broadway. He hit eight ATMs in his first eight blocks alone. He kept going; on the Upper West Side, three banks on 96th Street. At 4:31pm, he reached Bank of America, and he took out five withdrawals there for $4,015. Jose felt unstoppable. He didn’t think anyone was suspicious or watching him, and so he just kept going. But as you know, banks have cameras, and everything he was doing was being recorded.
Jose hit up seven more ATMs around 86th Street alone. He walked further south past the Beacon Theater. He got to 72nd Street, hit twelve more ATMs in that area. At another Bank of America he took out $2,400 from an ATM. Soon, he was in Times Square. Thousands of people were around. It’s easy to slip into the crowd, change directions, or lay low for a few minutes. It’s good cover for now, at least. But he didn’t daddle. He was on the move. More ATMs hit. His backpack was starting to feel heavy. You don’t realize how much money weighs until you got a backpack full of tens of thousands of dollars. But he wanted to do more, because imagine having an unlimited credit card that you could just take as much money out as you wanted, and you had all night to do it. You’re not going to want to quit early or go to sleep. This is go time. He was gaining confidence, and he felt a surge of urgency, because when he curved up and around the bank on the east side, he was doing seven withdrawals at a time, $5,600 on the spot.
Where to next? He went into the late hours of the night. His bag was bulging, becoming completely full. But in such a New York way, people using the ATMs right next to him didn’t even glance in his direction as he would put money in his backpack. All eight of the people in Alberto’s crew had similar experiences. The cards worked seamlessly. No one had any problems, and they all went all night long. In total, eight of them made 3000 withdraws until they ran out of places to put the money. Their backpacks were full. Pockets were full. Alberto gave the signal, and people started heading home. Phew, they did it. It was a huge success for all eight of them. Each of them brought home more money than they’ve ever made in their whole lives, and got home safely. They got away with it. When they got together the next day and counted their money, they had a total of $2,800,000. Wow, they stole $2.8 million from banks all across New York.
If you look at that dollar amount of loan that was stolen, this is one of the largest bank robberies ever in the history of New York City, all done by eight hustlers with big dreams. For context, the biggest bank robbery in New York was for almost $6 million, the Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport, a case so big Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro made a movie about it called Goodfellas. [Music] This was a massive success for them. They started partying and celebrating. You know, when you’re looking at $2.8 million like that, it starts to change you. You start thinking, should we just take this money for ourselves and disappear or give the boss his cut and look for another job in the future? We’re not exactly sure how the split happened from this heist. I suspect that they sent the boss his half of the money. Alberto, of course, wanted to be clever. He was starting to get nervous about all this money around, so he packaged up $800,000 so he could stash it somewhere safe. No, not in New York.
That would be too close to home. He wanted to be more clever than that. Florida seemed far enough away. After all, he liked going down to Miami sometimes, so he had someone take the money down to Florida by bus, because it’s less suspicious that way. It took the guy twenty-four hours to get there and then meet Alberto there to give him his money. But in the meantime, the boys were partying, living a new lifestyle. I saw one photo they took; it’s got four cans of Coors Light with a pile of cash on top of it, and then a Dominican Republic hat on top of that, which I think is funny. Like, with all that money, they chose to show off pics of them drinking Coors Light. Like, what kind of flex is that, where you’re like, look at all this money we have, and we have Coors Light? They liked partying in Florida, and they would take trips down there and just live large. They went on shopping sprees in Miami, they bought new cars, $10,000-Rolex watches.
On one wild, drunken night at a club in South Beach, Florida, they danced and splurged on bottles of Moet and Dom Perignon until 4:00 in the morning. The bill was $4,000 plus tip, or in other words, one ATM’s worth. Life was going really well for them. It was like the world was theirs. But with $2.8 million missing from New York banks, some investigators started looking for clues. Alberto was the first to sense something was off. Maybe his boss tipped him off, or someone told him that they got a call from the police, or maybe he just sensed it. I imagine the hairs on the back of his neck would tingle every now and then. I mean, they had to know there were cameras all over New York City, and it was just a matter of time for someone to figure out which cards were used, which transactions were fraudulent, and then pulling up that surveillance video of the people using the ATMs. Alberto had a feeling that someone was watching those videos, watching him. It was making him paranoid, so he wanted to get away and lay low.
[Music] Alberto was starting to think being in America is becoming risky. It might be a better idea to leave the country, go back to the DR for a while, wait for things to cool down. He wanted to play it smart, and he thought with his cut of the money, he could live a happy life with his wife in the DR with that amount. It would be a good life. So, that was his plan. He got a plane ticket to fly to the DR and leave the country. He thought about it more, and he realized it’s the only plan. If he stays, it’s just a matter of time before the police find him, so he has to leave. But the trip to the DR was going to be risky. Alberto wasn’t sure if the police had any info on him. If he tries to board the plane, are they going to stop him? But he took the chance anyway. He threw $100,000 in cash in his luggage and went to the airport. He was nervous about taking a flight with all that money and possibly under investigation by the feds, but he made it onto the plane and all the way home to the DR without any problems.
Alberto got away with his split of the money, safe and sound in his wife’s hometown with his wife and family. It felt good to be home. But what about the other guys? They were all in the US still. When Alberto fled the country, Elvis realized he should probably go on the run, too. Alberto was the guy who knew everything. It’s a bad sign when your leader leaves you. Elvis suddenly felt like everything was closing in on him. So, in a panic, he left behind his mom and siblings and raced to the JFK Airport. He didn’t want to draw any attention, so he only took $2,000 in cash with him, but it didn’t matter. By then, the investigators had positive IDs on him and others, and when Elvis got to the airport, he was arrested. Alberto felt bad for his buddy. Man, someone got arrested over this. This is getting serious. But at the same time, Alberto felt even better that he left the country when he did. He must have just barely slipped the police. But all the dominoes started falling one by one.
Each of the guys Alberto worked with were either arrested or turned themselves in. Did Alberto feel guilty? I don’t know. He probably couldn’t believe his own luck. He was in the DR with his family. So, he splurged on a Toyota pickup truck and used it to split his time between Santiago, where he was born, and the nearby city of San Francisco de Macoris, where his wife’s family lived. Alberto’s plan was to lay low, kick back, relax, and enjoy the money, but the paranoia ate at him. [Music] The money was like a curse. He had a lot of it now, cash physically with him, and other people knew that. He was safe from the FBI, sure, but his friends and family knew he was loaded, and word was spreading. So, he bought a 45 Glock pistol and carried it around wherever he went. The rumor goes that even when Alberto walked a short distance from his front door to his truck in the driveway, he wore it outside his clothes just in case anyone was watching. Alberto was slowly unwinding into his new life.
He’d been in the DR for two weeks now and was staying at his wife’s place, a single-story concrete house, and he liked to play dominoes with his cousins. One night, when playing dominoes with them, two guys came over that he wasn’t expecting, and they immediately looked menacing, both of them wearing hoods and moving in quickly, and they drew their guns and pointed them at Alberto. Alberto looked up and reached to grab his pistol, but he was too late. The two men opened fire on Alberto. They shot him in the left side between his hip and his rib cage. The bullet traveled through his torso and exited his right side. His cousins screamed and started to run. They were eighteen and twenty years old, but even they weren’t safe. The cousins were both shot in the thighs. The men came closer to Alberto and shot him again, four more times, and killed Alberto. Then the hooded men fled. They got into an SUV and sped away, going south. Police arrived on the scene.
They found an M16 machine gun, a 9-millimeter Smith and Wesson pistol, 22-caliber Ruger handgun, some boxes of ammunition, and according to one local news outlet, three swords. But the strangest part was when the police investigated the house, they found a pile of Alberto’s money lying right there on the table. So, I’m not sure why the killers left without taking it. Maybe they simply stole whatever Alberto had on him and ran. Maybe they were met with some return gunfire from someone. Maybe they were just panicked and wanted to get away. But it seems like they didn’t take much or any of Alberto’s money. Alberto was twenty-five years old when he died.
REPORTER: John, good morning. What a story.
JOHN: This is a brilliant case by the US Secret Service that’s being prosecuted by the US Attorney in Brooklyn, Loretta Lynch.
TYLER: [Music] This is an incredible story we’re about to tell you, the feds busting an international cyber bank hack that funnelled millions of dollars from ATM machines in Manhattan. Senior correspondent Scott Cohn here with the latest developments. Hi, Scott.
SCOTT: It is a wild story, Tyler. $2.8 million in a matter of hours in Manhattan alone.
TYLER: This is one of those interesting stories which leads to basic questions like how, who?
SCOTT: You know this is — if you’re a criminal, this is a gorgeous scheme. If you are a bank, this is your worst nightmare, and if you’re a prosecutor like Loretta Lynch or the Secret Service agents involved in this case, it’s a great caper in terms of the case, but you realize you’re just at the tip of the iceberg.
JOHN: Eight people indicted in New York. Seven of them are in custody, but authorities say they’re just the New York cell in a global crime ring.
SCOTT: [Music] What you have here is you’ve got backers. These are people who’ve got big money who are paying people to break into the bank systems, get the pin numbers of debit card accounts, and so on. Those are the hackers. So, the backers pay the hackers, then you go to the cashers, and the cashers — once the backers have paid the hackers, they’ve broken through, they’ve now gotten the pin codes, and they’ve raised the limits on the accounts to be unlimited for withdrawal. The cashers go out, and when they get the pin numbers and the signals on their smartphones, they’re told ‘go’. In the case in New York, the New York cell went up and down Broadway, and in the course of two hours took $2.8 million out of ATMs from 116th Street to 23rd Street in a line.
JOHN: We’re joined live now by the federal prosecutor in the case. Loretta Lynch is the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Well, thanks for joining us. So, just explain a little bit more the mechanics here.
LORETTA: In the New York crew during the second attack in February, those eight guys only had one account among them, and that account limit had been raised to $40 million. They look at prepaid debit cards because they’re not tied to an individual, not tied to an individual’s checking or savings account. People tend to check those. You would notice if your own personal debit card limit shot up to $40 million, and you’d probably call somebody. But the most sophisticated part of this attack is the hack itself. These are patient cyber-criminals. It takes anywhere from two to eighteen months to execute the kind of control needed to really get inside these credit card processors.
JOHN: The people that you did arrest, that you announced yesterday, the aid in New York, say they’re low-level, right? I mean, they’re not doing the high-tech stuff. They’re essentially street criminals?
LORETTA: Well, they’re not doing the high-tech stuff and — but we wouldn’t call them low-level, because without them you could not plunder the bank accounts the way in which they were plundered. They’re actually a vital part of the organization. Everyone seems to have equal importance, just a very, very different role in this. But these guys were the feet on the street, so to speak. They were the ones who were commanded and directed to go to the ATMs, to wait for that code, to spring into action, and cash out as much money as they could before the credit card processor or the bank or someone else discovered what they were doing.
(Outro): [Outro music] Thanks for listening. This episode actually links up with another episode I made, which is actually bonus episode number 7, called Seagate. See, the mastermind behind all this was a guy named Seagate, and he was the one who got the magic cards, and he wasn’t just getting Alberto to cash them. He had teams all over the globe doing it. When I made that episode I didn’t know about Alberto’s story, and then once I heard this, I was like, Bo, this needs to be its own episode. Hell, this needs to be a movie. Even though it’s only a microcosm of the whole operation, it’s still quite the story, don’t you think? Anyway, like I said, if you want to hear the bigger story, that’s bonus episode number 7, called Seagate. How do you get bonus episodes? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Go to plus.darknetdiaries.com, and there you can sign up to be a supporter. When you do, boom, you get eleven bonus episodes to enjoy right now. So, please consider supporting the show if you think it gives you value or you appreciate it, because I really appreciate it when you support me back. This show is created by me, the base-64-encoded Jack Rhysider. Our editor is the control bit, Tristan Ledger, and our sound designer for this one was Mr. Carriage Return, Andrew Meriwether, mixing done by proximity sound, and our intro music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. My favorite joke about banks is that every time I go into a bank, they ask me, hi, how can I help you today? I always say, oh, I’m just seeing if you have any free samples. This is Darknet Diaries.