The FBI is warning Sacramento banks and retailers that the cash machines sitting in their lobbies and storefronts are increasingly becoming high-tech piñatas for organized crews who know exactly where to swing.
In a FLASH bulletin published Thursday, the bureau and its partners flagged a national surge in “ATM jackpotting,” a type of attack that blends on-site tampering with custom malware so machines spit out cash without a real transaction. The schemes are described as rapid, coordinated cash-out runs that go after both the guts of the machine and the Windows-based software that tells it when to pay up, according to IC3.gov. FBI Sacramento publicly amplified the warning in a social media post, urging local banks, retailers and law enforcement to follow the advisory and report anything suspicious, according to FBI Sacramento.
The scale is not small. Since 2020, federal agents say they have tracked about 1,900 jackpotting incidents nationwide, more than 700 of them in 2025 alone, with reported losses topping $20 million, according to IC3.gov. For Sacramento businesses that host stand-alone ATMs, that is a strong hint to take physical security and software hygiene seriously.
How the attacks work
According to the advisory, crews often start with something painfully simple: physical access. Attackers can use widely available generic keys to open an ATM’s maintenance panel, then get to the hard drive or ports inside…