Federal prosecutors in Connecticut have accused a group of four robbers of netting more than $500,000 in an elaborate “jackpotting” scheme that targeted ATMs at rest stops along Interstate 95.
The men hit at least nine cash machines during a 10-day spree in August, the US attorney’s office said in a press release on Monday, which charged the four with a range of federal offenses.
Prosecutors say the group used “specialized hardware and malware” to corrupt the machines and force them to dispense an almost unlimited amount of cash. In just one raid, at a northbound rest stop on the I-95 in Fairfield, the gang scooped up $136,000, they said.
Court documents state that the group’s overall haul reached $529,220 from eight ATMs between 8 and 18 August 2025. A software patch installed to try to prevent such robberies thwarted the alleged robbers at another machine in Ansonia on the first day of the spree.
Two of the men live in New York, one comes from North Carolina and the fourth resides in Massachusetts.
The attorney’s office said all four are citizens of Venezuela and named them as Euclides Moreno Itanare, 28; Willian Ricardo Flores, 49; Alberto Jose Freites Arvilla, 41; and Luis Jose Freites Arvilla, 38.
“For each of the thefts, the pattern of behavior was similar,” the press release said.
“Surveillance video shows that while Luis Freites Arvilla acted as a lookout, Alberto Freites Arvilla opened the hood of the ATM, accessed the internal components of the ATM, and then left the area,” the press release added.
“Over the course of several hours, Luis Freites Arvilla, Itanare, and Flores then took turns withdrawing cash from the ATM.”
The group also made efforts to disguise their appearance, the release noted, saying: “The defendants sometimes changed clothes in an attempt to avoid suspicion when approaching the same ATM multiple times.”
The FBI, Connecticut state police and the police departments of Raleigh, North Carolina, and New York conducted a joint investigation that led to the arrest of the four men on Thursday.