Five Venezuelan nationals have pleaded guilty to conspiring to jackpot ATMs in two small Kansas towns, admitting in federal court that they tried and failed to force cash machines in Wamego and Manhattan to spit out money without ever completing a legitimate transaction. One of the men has already been sentenced to nine months in prison, while the other four remain in custody awaiting their own sentencing hearings.
Federal prosecutors announced Monday that Luis Alberto Velasquez-Artigas, 27; Royder Adrian Figuera-Perez, 29; Javier Mejia, Jr., 27; Gabriel Alexjandro Corales-Garcia, 33; and Italo Lizandro Corrales-Carrillo, 26, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank larceny in Kansas federal court, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Velasquez-Artigas received the nine-month sentence, while his four co-defendants are still waiting to learn their fate, per Recorded Future News.
Court filings describe how the group traveled from Indiana to Kansas in December 2025 with a plan to physically install malware on ATMs in the two college towns. The DOJ's account of those filings says the men fled Wamego after triggering a security alarm, then attempted the same scheme in Manhattan, where surveillance cameras captured their efforts before they could pull off the theft.
An FBI Agent's Warning About a Nationwide Trend
FBI Kansas City, which announced the guilty pleas, described jackpotting as a scheme in which criminal actors exploit vulnerabilities in ATM technology to access and steal the cash inside the machines, often without any legitimate transaction ever taking place, leaving financial institutions to piece together how and where the money was taken. The bureau said the Kansas case reflects a growing trend it and its law enforcement partners are seeing across the country, according to the FBI Kansas City
announcement.
“The FBI will continue to identify and expose these schemes, work closely with our private-sector and law enforcement partners to strengthen defense, and pursue those responsible,” said FBI Kansas City Special Agent in Charge Chris Ormerod, per the bureau's statement. “Criminals should know that innovative methods of theft will not shield them from accountability. We will use every available investigative tool to disrupt these schemes, protect our communities, and hold those responsible accountable.”
U.S. Attorney Ryan A. Kriegshauser for the District of Kansas struck a similar tone, warning that jackpotting bandits are sweeping the nation and urging banks and financial institutions to immediately invest in software and hardware defenses that can block malware installation, the DOJ said.
A National Surge Tied to Millions in Losses
The Wamego and Manhattan attempts are small pieces of a much larger picture. An FBI report released in February documented more than 1,900 ATM jackpotting incidents nationwide since 2020, with over 700 recorded in 2025 alone, resulting in direct losses exceeding $20 million, the DOJ noted. FBI Director Kash Patel said in late August that coordinated jackpotting schemes have accounted for more than $58 million in stolen funds nationwide since 2021, the same figure cited by Recorded Future News.
Some of the largest jackpotting rings have been linked to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan transnational criminal organization the U.S. government has designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization, which federal prosecutors in Nebraska and other jurisdictions say uses the scheme to help fund broader operations, according to the DOJ. The Kansas case does not identify the five defendants as members of that organization, but it lands amid a wave of prosecutions tied to the same style of attack across multiple states.
The malware crews typically rely on, such as Ploutus, works by manipulating the eXtensions for Financial Services software layer in Windows-based ATMs, forcing continuous cash dispensations without any user account verification, according to Tom's Hardware. That technical vulnerability has made physical installation, like what the Kansas group is accused of attempting, a persistent risk even as cyber-based attacks have come to dominate the crime nationally.
Harsher Sentences Emerging Elsewhere
The Kansas sentence handed down so far is comparatively light next to a case just across the state line. On August 20, a federal judge in Nebraska sentenced 27-year-old Venezuelan national Juan Manuel Gouveia-Aguilera to eight years in federal prison for managing a jackpotting conspiracy responsible for more than $3.5 million in losses, which prosecutors called the longest federal sentence handed down for an individual jackpotting role to date. That case shows how sentencing outcomes can vary widely depending on a defendant's role and the scale of losses involved.
Industry crime data published in late 2025 found that cyber-based jackpotting malware attacks now make up more than 70 percent of reported U.S. ATM crimes, while traditional physical break-ins account for under 10 percent, a shift Hoodline has previously reported. The Kansas case, involving a botched physical installation attempt rather than a successful cyber heist, is something of an outlier against that trend, but it adds to a growing list of federal jackpotting prosecutions this year stretching from Oklahoma to Nevada to Wisconsin.
