• Crazy news of the day: dude gets other dudes to rob banks claiming he's from the cia
    9 replies, posted
[quote]Villegas introduced Torres to the man on the phone, Theo. He didn’t offer a last name. Theo said he worked for the government and was recruiting Torres to test the defenses of Washington-area banks. The plan was simple: Theo would tell him which bank to target, and Torres would give a manager a note demanding money. Armed security officers, threats to call the police, or a wait that exceeded five minutes would be cause to flee. If he left with money, he’d be paid $25,000. Successful or not, he was guaranteed $2,500 for taking part. Torres would deliver any money recovered to a location near Richmond. If arrested, Torres should stay silent. Federal authorities would get him out in 24 hours. [/quote] [url]http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-18/in-virginias-fairfax-county-robbing-banks-for-the-cia#p1[/url]
This is the oldest gag in the book. Damn, that's both funny and sad.
This guy got civvies to rob banks for him? This sounds exactly like the Mastermind perk in Payday 2.
Oh my god, Nobody was even charged in any of the robberies.
Holy shit, the truth is stranger than fiction. This was a -really- fascinating read. Brady really thought what he was doing through, since he managed to get so far posing as an official.
Are most Americans not aware of what their own government does? The CIA doesn't operate domestically on matters of economic security, that's the FBI's job. That's just the first of a bunch of red flags that anyone passingly familiar with the government (and he was in Fairfax, come on) should notice.
Oceans 15
Holy shit, that whole article is almost too insane to be true. Right from out of a movie.
Haha good stuff, This reminds me of that case years ago where some teenager(?) convinced another guy he was the FBI and he had to kill his friend to get the job, but the kid he had to kill was the guy who was pretending to be the FBI. Er, something like that anyway. The news article didn't say, I wonder if the cops just laughed at him and let him go or if he's actually going to the big house for being retarded.
[quote]The thought of making $25,000 was seductive to Torres, who was earning $11 an hour at Target. Since graduating from high school in 2008, Torres, who goes by the nickname Geo, hadn’t changed much. He spent most of his time hanging out with friends, collecting Batman comic books, and working part-time jobs. Twenty-five thousand dollars would be enough to start community college and move out of his parents’ house. [/quote] Man that sounds like the position I was in a few years ago after graduating, coincidentally in 2008 as well. Though I didn't stay in limbo that long, nor dumb enough to think I could get a get out of jail free card from the government because the CIA wanted me to rob banks. The story about the guy who planned out the whole thing is even more bizarre [quote] Theo had used an Internet program to conceal his number—the number Torres, police, and lawyers had was not his real one—but Villegas had figured a way around it. Investigators quickly traced the number to a 26-year-old named Joshua Brady living in Matoaca, Va., a quiet town of 2,400 more than 100 miles south of Washington. Brady was sleeping on Aug. 17 when federal agents entered the dingy ranch-style home he shared with his mother, grandmother, and 10-year-old brother. Investigators seized computers and found several books about the CIA. Prosecutors charged Brady with impersonating a government official and three counts of attempted bank robbery. Each crime carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. With crooked teeth and an acned face, Brady doesn’t look like a confidence man. Yet his voice—mild, almost monotonous, with a hint of Virginia drawl—conveys professionalism, experience, and sincerity. In an October 2012 jailhouse interview, Brady appeared calm, insisting he was an intelligence agent. He claimed he was being penalized for trying to blow the whistle on the CIA for letting Torres take the fall. “This was not the kind of operation I wanted to work on,” he said from behind a glass partition in the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Va. Brady said he ran an information technology consultancy from home, “keeping you free from hackers.” As a boy, he said he suffered from a digestive tract disorder and was bullied in high school, which he left at 16, earning his diploma online. Brady was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He claims he joined the CIA before turning 20, providing “technical services” and training civilians. “I can’t go into great detail on initial contact or my background,” he said. The purpose of Operation Downstrike, he said, was to train Torres for clandestine work. “When they pull the alarm, then you have a short time to get out of there,” he said. “You need to be able to escape, and that’s going to be stressful. If you crack under stress, then you’re useless to the agency.” The rules of the operation dictated no weapons, according to Brady. Stolen money was to be turned over to the government. Brady refused to identify anyone else involved in the operation, saying disclosure was barred by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Documents on his encrypted hard drive—seized by the government—could prove all of this, he insisted. Other operations would follow, he said. “This is real.” According to federal prosecutors, Brady was awaiting trial for using a forged federal judge’s signature at the time of his arrest. In the past, Brady had posed as a computer security consultant, a hacker, and a University of Virginia law student, federal prosecutors said in court papers. Court filings in Virginia sketch a repeat offender whose father was in and out of prison. Since 2005, Brady had been accused of posing as an entrepreneur seeking multimillion-dollar deals for computer hardware, stealing $1,100 from a woman to whom he promised an Xbox 360, and writing bad checks. In the past seven years he was charged in three criminal cases: He was found guilty in one, pled no contest in another, and pled guilty in the third. He was released in 2012 after a year in prison for violating the terms of his sentence in the Xbox case. Dan Christman, who works at a general store about a mile from Brady’s home, said he used to spend a lot of time with Brady playing EverQuest, an online game involving wizards, warriors, and dragons. About eight years ago Brady was caught by game administrators stealing virtual money, Christman said. “Josh is a really smart guy,” Christman said. “He has a lot of energy in that department but nowhere to funnel it.” [/quote]
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