A 26-year-old Chicago man is accused of pulling off a fast, high-dollar run of ATM “jackpotting” hits across Waukesha County and nearby Milwaukee suburbs, walking away with roughly $263,000 in cash in a single day, according to prosecutors.
Court filings name the suspect as Edison Landaeta Martinez. He faces three felony charges, is being held in the Waukesha County Jail on $300,000 bond, and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on Dec. 15. Those details come from local court records and reporting by FOX6 News Milwaukee. Prosecutors say one of the thieves targeted a Summit Credit Union ATM in Waukesha.
Investigators allege Martinez swiped about $41,000 from that Summit machine on Nov. 16, then hit two more bank ATMs in Wauwatosa and Oak Creek later that same day, grabbing just over $222,000 from those locations. Taken together, the figures in the complaints total roughly $263,000. “It’s more prevalent right now,” said April DeValkenaere of Fortress Forensic Investigations, commenting on the broader rise in jackpotting schemes. Authorities say they later tracked Martinez’s vehicle to credit unions in Michigan before he was arrested at the request of Waukesha police, according to reporting and court documents summarized by FOX6 News Milwaukee.
How jackpotting works
Jackpotting is a hybrid cyber and physical attack in which thieves tamper with an ATM’s internal hardware or software so the machine can be told to spit out cash without linking the withdrawals to any customer’s account. Federal prosecutors have brought multistate jackpotting cases in places such as New York and Nebraska that show how crews can travel quickly and hit machines across state lines…