The Justice Department has unveiled yet another slew of indictments that demonstrates how financially disastrous the Biden administration’s importation of Venezuelan “migrants” has been.
Ever since landing here, the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua (TdA) terror gang has been establishing bases nationwide from which to commit crimes ranging from extortion and kidnapping to drug dealing and racketeering.
Following up on the indictment of more than four dozen TdA and other goons for ATM jackpotting and other more-violent crimes in December, a federal grand jury in Nebraska has returned another indictment charging almost three dozen of the invaders with the electronic theft.
The latest indictment brings to 87 the number of defendants thus charged.
Millions Stolen
ATM jackpotting uses a unique method to rob bank accounts at automatic teller machines. Instead of using card skimming, which involves using hidden electronic devices to steal data or pin numbers at ATMs or point-of-sale machines such as gas pumps, jackpotting robs an ATM itself.
It uses hardware and/or software that causes an ATM to dump its cash into the hands of the thief.
The oily thieves of TdA are naturals at it.
The federal grand jury in Nebraska hit 31 criminals “for their roles in a large conspiracy to deploy malware and steal millions of dollars from ATMs in the United States,” reported the Justice Department (DOJ):
Fifty-six others have already been charged. Many of the defendants charged in this Homeland Security Task Force operation are Venezuelan and Colombian nationals including illegal alien Tren de Aragua (TdA) members. This indictment alleges 32 counts including conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank burglary and computer fraud, bank fraud, bank burglary, and damage to computers.
The thieves used malware called Ploutus to hack the ATMs:
The conspiracy relied on the recruitment of a number of individuals to deploy Ploutus malware nationwide. Members of the conspiracy and TdA would travel in groups, using multiple vehicles, to the locations of targeted banks and credit unions. These groups would conduct initial reconnaissance and take note of external security features at the ATMs.
After that, the thieves popped the door or hood to an ATM and lurked close by to find out whether an alarm had sounded or whether police were on the way. Then they either removed the machine’s hard drive and replaced it with one containing the Ploutus malware, or installed it with a thumb drive.
“The Ploutus malware’s primary purpose was to issue unauthorized commands associated with the Cash Dispensing Module of the ATM in order to force withdrawals of currency,” DOJ continued:
The Ploutus malware was also designed to delete evidence of malware … to conceal, create a false impression, mislead, or otherwise deceive employees of the banks and credit unions from learning about the deployment of the malware on the ATM.
After the techno-heist, the conspirators split the ill-gotten booty.
Nationwide Indictments
As The New American reported in December, a grand jury in Nebraska indicted 22 criminals in a jackpotting conspiracy.
The charges included bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and burglary, and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. That nationwide criminal conspiracy stole millions for the defendants and put money into the coffers of the TdA terror gang.
In October, a 56-count indictment alleged that 32 criminals committed bank fraud, bank burglary, and conspiracy to commit bank burglary and computer fraud.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said DOJ has prosecuted more than 290 TdA terrorists.
Biden Helped Import TdA Paramilitary Terror
The Biden administration assisted the gang in establishing a network of bases nationwide. TdA terrorists took over hotels and apartments in El Paso and San Antonio, Texas, and Aurora, Colorado. In the latter case, American taxpayers subsidized the takeover through the American Rescue Plan, which in turn funneled money to far-left nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that showered “migrants” with money.
The “migrants” were gang members.
One NGO “provided up to two months of rental assistance, as many migrants did not have, or were unable to open, bank accounts,” City Journal reported:
Within six months, according to [a former property-management] employee, approximately 80 percent of the residents of these buildings were Venezuelan migrants. The employee also noted that the buildings [began to see] gang activity and violence.
Such is the scope of the TdA infiltration of the United States that President Donald Trump, having designated TdA as a terrorist organization, invoked the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport gang members.
In March, the Miami Herald reported that the corrupt regime of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro — seized by U.S. forces in December — had dispatched 300 TdA members to the United States.
“Among those sent to the United States were 300 gang members who had received paramilitary training in Venezuela, said Gary Berntsen, a decorated former CIA station chief who headed the agency’s unit searching for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan,” the newspaper reported:
“The Venezuelan regime has assumed operational control of these guys [Tren de Aragua] and has trained 300 of them; they have given them paramilitary training, training them to fire weapons, on how to conduct sabotage, how to use crypto,” Berntsen … said. “They have given them all like a four- to six-week course. They put these 300 guys through that course and [then] they were deploying them into the United States to 20 locations, to 20 separate states.”
An FBI report concluded the same thing.
The nationwide indictments of TdA announced in December, which besides the charges for ATM jackpotting also include charges for “racketeering activity that included robbery, extortion, kidnapping, money laundering and controlled substance offenses,” as a federal indictment in Colorado alleged, suggest that Berntsen was right.
