Carlos Javier Padron, 36, an illegal alien from Venezuela, was sentenced to 78 months in prison for his role in a conspiracy to deploy malware and steal millions of dollars from ATMs across the United States, a scheme known as “ATM jackpotting.” His co-defendant, Oddry Arnoldo Cabrera Torrealba, 37, also an illegal alien from Venezuela who has also gone by the alias “Luis Alejandro Berdugo Barraza,” received the same 78-month sentence on June 11.
“Carlos Javier Padron and Oddry Arnoldo Cabrera Torrealba helped deploy sophisticated malware as part of a transnational criminal network that hacked ATMs across the United States and stole millions of dollars through a technique known as ATM jackpotting — which caused bank ATMs to dispense the cash inside of them,” said A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Crimes like this undermine the security of our financial institutions and fuel the operations of violent transnational criminal organizations such as Tren de Aragua.”
U.S. Attorney Lesley Woods for the District of Nebraska said ATM jackpotting has become a central funding source for the gang. “ATM jackpotting is TdA’s business plan and their assessed primary source of revenue to fund their terrorist activities,” Woods said, citing human trafficking, armed robbery, murder and drug trafficking among the group’s broader criminal activities.
According to court documents, Padron and Torrealba were part of a network that developed and deployed a variant of malware known as Ploutus, installing it directly on ATMs to force unauthorized cash withdrawals. The malware was also designed to erase evidence of its use, making detection by financial institutions more difficult. The two men were arrested by the Lincoln, Neb., Police Department in October 2024 at the site of an active jackpotting operation.
Both men pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank burglary and one count of computer fraud and intentional damage to a protected computer. The court ordered them to jointly pay $1,537,696 in restitution to the banks targeted in the scheme.
Since their arrests, federal investigators have identified a far larger network: 96 additional defendants have been indicted on related charges, including providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, bank burglary, money laundering, unauthorized computer access and bank fraud. Investigators say the case has established extensive links between the broader network of indicted co-conspirators and Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal organization that began as a Venezuelan prison gang in the mid-2000s and has since expanded throughout the Western Hemisphere, including into the United States.
The case was investigated by the FBI’s Omaha Field Office and Homeland Security Investigations Omaha, with assistance from numerous other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, and is being prosecuted by the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nebraska, and Joint Task Force Vulcan, a unit originally created to dismantle MS-13 that has since been expanded to target Tren de Aragua.
By: Montana Newsroom wire