Homeless Hustle: Bank Fraud

[The simple yet daring scam that carelessly fed my $100-150/day drug habit]

If you have never heard this pearl of wisdom, listen up, its a good one: "Stealing banking information that has been thrown in the trash outside of an apartment complex is a felony offense which can easily land you in a state prison." I know right! Who would have thought!? Oh yeah, also, its actually a really shitty thing to do to the person(s) who owns said bank account as well.

Maybe it was my general lack of regard for myself which made it so easy for me to show a lack of regard for others and their property? Maybe it was the endless grams of heroin and meth I was shooting into my veins on a 6 hour basis around the clock? Yeah its definitively not that. All joking aside, at the time, I could draw you up a Johnny Cochran style defense of why it was ok for me to be doing it. However, behind the clever victim mentality facade along with the endless blaming of everything in the world other than myself, the actual truth still remained- I was choosing to do something that I knew was wrong, would certainly hurt others, and I didn't care at all. Its funny how simple the truth can be.

[Guadalupe Ln] near 45th St in Austin, TX where I would canvas dumpsters looking for anything of value.

When you live on the streets for an extended period of time, you learn to adapt or implode. Being that I'm naturally very resourceful, which in this case turned out to be a very bad thing, I had no problem adapting. Because I had a daily high dollar drug habit which I chose to feed above all else, its safe to say I did A LOT of adapting, which usually meant finding clever ways of stealing. If I'm being completely honest, clever is probably the wrong word, sociopathic is much more appropriate. Honesty, what a concept.

My nightly routine was simple. I would get as high as possible, then proceed to canvas apartment complex dumpsters from UT campus all the way up to Rundberg Lane & Lamar Blvd. Dumpster diving sounds dirty and disgusting, because it is. However, in this case, it was essentially my ticket to junkie heaven. I would shamelessly scour dumpsters for bank statements, credit card statements, as well as any other pertinent personal information that I could use to piece together an identity or some form of financial record. More often than naught, especially around UT campus, I had no problem retrieving something of value that I could use to put my plan in motion.

From there, based upon what I found(stole), I would go one of two routes: ACH fraud or Identity Fraud. The most simple, fairly easiest route, was ACH fraud. I would simply take a live bank account number which I retrieved from a discarded bank statement, look up the corresponding bank routing number, take this information online where I had a pre-established Ecommerce or fake business merchant account, enter said information as if I were billing said account for services, then essentially automatically withdrawl funds from said account. I would purposely wait until shortly after bank closings each day because it gave me a 12-16 hour head-start before the banks realized fraud had occurred. I knew, depending on the account owner as well as the level of security of said bank, the transaction would eventually be flagged but usually by the time the banks caught on I had already moved the money around and abandoned the account I was using. Sometimes it worked without any problems, and sometimes it was caught before the money could transfer. It varied on a case by case basis. I always kept the amount under $250 because I learned that most banks simply wrote off any fraud under certain amounts, re-crediting the customer without any "real" investigation. The sad truth is that the resources it would take to fully investigate this crime would total way more than the actual amount stolen, so most banks simply made a note of the incident, re-credited the customer, and wrote it off. This wasn't always the case, but usually it was.

I justified my junkie actions by telling myself that, due to the customer being reimbursed, no one was getting hurt. How sad that this was the level of disregard for my fellow human being I had chosen in life.

The second route was synthetic as well as old-fashioned identity theft. I would take any personal information I found from financial statements, DMV records, car insurance records, loan records, or anything with personal information on it, and begin to piece together an identity. If I didn't have a full identity, I would take the information I had and create a synthetic Identity, forging the necessary details that were absent. For example, I have a name, birthdate and address, but no social security number. I would create a fake social security number and apply for a loan or credit card. I know at this point I'm going to get declined because the credit agencies don't have a credit report for this person, however they do recognize this a real person due to partially real details, so this somewhat legitimizes the request. What happens next is although I am declined for any credit I apply for, the credit agencies create a new create file for this synthetic person, which means there is now a record of this person in existence. This is very important because at this point, I would create an online profile of this person, possibly social media, a linked-in profile, anything to show a digital footprint of this new identity, which would again partially legitimize this "person's" existence. After that, I would apply for a low-deposit secured credit card, which more times than naught I would be approved for, pay the deposit, keep track of the payments for a couple months, then after 3 months I would suddenly have a high enough credit score to apply for a normal credit card, which I would be approved for, and from there- it's off to the races. Believe it or not, there were many homeless people who worked together to pull of this sophisticated scam, as horrible as that is.

[Synthetic Identity Fraud] scam which became a common form of feeding my addiction.

Looking back, I am disgusted that I could perpetrate this level of harm on anyone, even the credit agencies and banks. Although I was sick in life, addicted, blah, blah, blah, the truth was that no one held a gun to my head. I was choosing to do this every step of the way, not because I was addicted, but because my character was incredibly weak. That's the kind of person I was. Blaming the drugs or living on the streets would be a complete cop-out excuse. I chose this, time-and-time again, and in the moment I did it without second thought. I enjoyed it quite frankly. I felt smart, accomplished, and important. I have come to realize that although I was definitely stuck in life, I was never completely stuck. Nothing can justify what I did, other than being a degenerate criminal with a complete lack of integrity.

When I entered recovery, time came for me to make amends to those I harmed. I chose to make those amends, to the best of my ability, and accept whatever consequences came with it. Most people were actually very gracious. Some were even supportive and encouraging. Some didn't respond. Some were pretty upset. I've learned that they way I make this right is not to say I'm sorry, but to live differently than how I used to, which is what I continue to do each day to the best of my ability.

[Me - 2023]