Four Venezuelan nationals face federal charges after allegedly stealing $529,220 from ATMs along Interstate 95 in Connecticut using a malware-based technique known as “jackpotting,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut announced Monday.
The men charged are Euclides Moreno Itanare, 28; Willian Ricardo Flores, 49; Alberto Jose Freites Arvilla, 41; and Luis Jose Freites Arvilla, 38, prosecutors said. Each is charged with interstate transportation of stolen property and conspiracy. If convicted, each faces up to 10 years in prison on the first charge and up to five years on the second.
Jackpotting involves using specialized hardware and malware to force an ATM to dispense all the cash it contains without a valid transaction. The technique has drawn escalating warnings from ATM manufacturers and federal law enforcement agencies in recent years.
Prosecutors alleged the men targeted nine ATMs along the I-95 corridor during a 10-day period from Aug. 8 to Aug. 18, 2025. They succeeded in stealing from eight machines — at rest stops in Fairfield, Branford, Madison, and Darien, and at a location in the city of Milford. An ATM in Ansonia had recently been patched with updated software that prevented the theft there.
The largest single haul came from a rest stop ATM in Fairfield, where the men allegedly made off with $136,000, prosecutors said. The total stolen across all eight machines came to $529,220.
Surveillance video from the targeted locations showed Luis Freites Arvilla acting as a lookout while Alberto Freites Arvilla opened the hood of an ATM and accessed its internal components, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The other men then allegedly took turns withdrawing cash from the machine over several hours. The defendants sometimes changed clothes to avoid suspicion when returning to the same ATM multiple times, prosecutors said.
The case is part of a broader federal effort to combat jackpotting, which authorities say is on the rise nationally. In a February report, federal investigators said of 1,900 jackpotting incidents reported since 2020, more than 700 occurred in 2025, resulting in losses exceeding $20 million.
The prosecution falls under the Homeland Security Task Force initiative established by Executive Order 14159, titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” The task force is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.