Did she say
what I think she said?
— You, Probably
Abbie was running Bitcoin events in Chicago and northwest Indiana. Mostly meetups at local pubs. I only had to be there a couple times a month for my shady valet scheme where marks handed over their keys and I made copies. Beanie was searching homes with Foke's crew, but I had a system for handling that while I was away. The operation was seamless, so it was time for me to branch out.
I wanted to try a larger, more targeted version of the scheme in New York, but Foke vetoed that. "Too hot," he said.
My next destination was obvious.
The Bitcoin 2022 Conference was held from April 6th to the 9th, at the Miami Beach Convention Center.
A lot of high quality marks would be gathering in one place.
I was there, but I needed a crew.
Foke set me up with a local guy named Smax.
Smax turned out to be the enforcer for a horrifying drug dealer named El Chacal, which is Spanish for The Jackal, though that detail is unimportant.
Señor Smax loaned me his primo goon, a guy named Tripa, pronounced as Treepa, short for Destripador, which means Ripper and/or Disemboweler, though let's look past all of that, because the Disemboweler brought in a small team of Haitian gang bangers known as Los Devoradores de Almas, which means The Devourers Of Souls, who...
...oh sweet baby jebus...
...Look, I know what you're thinking, but...
...Yes, I acknowledge that it sounds pretty bad when viewed from your perspective, but...
...JUST STOP.
Full stop.
My plan was rock solid. And, more importantly, it worked.
I set up valet parking near the convention center.
Valet parking, without a parking lot. How does that work? I'm glad you asked.
My Haitian bros were parking mark's cars somewhere, hopefully keeping track of where they put them.
I got orange muhfuggin' cones. I made signs. "Welcome Hodlers! Valet Parking!" My bros had vests. Somehow, vests make everything look legit. And since it was valet parking, drivers were oh so happy to hand over their keys, unknowingly giving me access to their homes.
I got a van, to use as a mobile workshop for copying keys with my HPC Speedex. But I didn't want keys from rentals. A rental car meant rental car keys, which meant the driver was from out of town.
I wanted local homes, so I needed local cars.
The first night of the Bitcoin conference was only supposed to be a test run, but I ended up with forty-five sets of keys. That's a lot of keys to copy, but I had time. People attending the conference were there for hours.
Oh, hell yes it worked.
Ever heard of shooting fish in a barrel? I was harpooning whales in a tank.
Foke had a guy for pairing license plates with names and addresses, but it took time, so I headed back to Gary to work on other stuff.
When the info finally arrived, it was glorious.
The mark of a great mark is somebody who has money, but isn't so rich they have great home security too.
I hung a map of Miami on the wall.
I made a list of marks and put them on different colored sticky notes to put 'em on the map, depending on where they lived.
Yellow meant west, pink meant south. Green meant money. North of Miami? That's where the money is. Bal Harbour, Sunny Isles, North Beach.
I went back to Florida a month later to hire lifters, to search the homes. I found them the same way as last time. I let them find me.
I hired three. Alejandro, Caro and Riki.
And Smax's main man, El Disembowelio, provided the muscle.
My God. It was a thing of beauty.
We were hitting six places a week. And as I took down mark after mark, they never said a word, because they thought they got hacked online.
I'm not gonna say my time in Florida was incident-free. Alejandro got sloppy, so he had to go, but Caro and Riki were eager for work, and the results spoke for themselves.
Overall, my hit rate was down, but the value was way up. In Gary, I was able to find Bitcoin seed words for half of the marks, but maybe one in ten was big. In Miami, only one in three marks had findable seed words, but one in six was worth a quarter million. Or more.
I swear to God I cut through Florida like buddah.
That's butter, not Buddha. The fuck is wrong with you?
Editor's Note:
I feel the need to remind readers that every component of this scheme constitutes multiple felonies. All of it is profoundly and unquestionably illegal. It is also unambiguously awful. We do not condone any of this.