Five Venezuelan nationals have pleaded guilty in a Kansas federal court to conspiracy to commit bank larceny after they drove from Indiana to Kansas in December 2025 to jackpot ATMs in Wamego and Manhattan. ATM jackpotting works by breaking into a machine, connecting a laptop to its internals (or swapping the hard drive), and loading malware — usually Ploutus — that commands the ATM to spit out all its cash on demand. In this case, both jackpotting attempts triggered alarms and failed; the group was captured on surveillance cameras and arrested within days. One defendant received nine months in prison; the other four are awaiting sentencing.
The guilty pleas are part of a wider federal crackdown. The FBI reported that jackpotting caused over $58 million in losses since 2021, with more than 700 incidents in 2025 alone. In a separate case decided earlier this month, another defendant was sentenced to eight years in prison for using Ploutus to steal more than $3.5 million from hundreds of ATMs. The FBI and U.S. prosecutors are urging banks and ATM operators to invest in updated technology capable of detecting and blocking jackpotting attacks, noting that newer machines carry built-in defences that foiled this Kansas operation.