Debriefing | New England Crack

Boston group steals credit card numbers, goes on donut and coffee spree. What the police interview might have sounded like.

September 23, 2008 — CSO — "A small group of people from Boston is suspected in a $100,000-plus scheme using stolen credit card numbers to boost balances on Dunkin' Donuts gift cards to their $200 limit, all with the aid of a computer..." —Boston.com 8/7/08

TRANSCRIPT OF POLICE INTERVIEW WITH THE ACCUSED AFTER THEY WERE ARRESTED AT A LOCAL DUNKIN' DONUTS: *

Interviewing Officer: OK, boys, start at the beginning.

Suspect 1: No, yeah, that's the thing—it all started when I woke up with one of those headaches where all I could think was, I need coffee RIGHT NOW, so I walked to Dunkies for an extra large light with extra sugar and reached in my pocket and realized I had one of those gift cards, and that got me thinking how cool gift cards are because they always make stuff seem like it's totally free even though you know in your head you paid at some point, but you're not paying RIGHT THEN so it's like, that's cool and I called my buddy—

Suspect 2: And I was all, wouldn't it be AWESOME if we had like hundreds of gift cards and NEVER had to pay for coffee and I'd so totally get an extra large regular every day and maybe a coffee roll or breakfast sandwich, or I really like those everything bagels too, or if I wanted to keep it mellow I'd just get a couple of donuts like those ones with the coconut sprinkles and honey dipped and jelly—

Suspect 1: Those coconut ones are nasty, dude, with that powdered sugar—it's like the anthrax donut or something, totally foul, bro

Suspect 2: Nah, man, that's a totally different donut—

Interviewing Officer: Let's stay on track here, fellahs. And slow it down a bit.

Suspect 1: So yeah, and I knew he's like wicked smart, but not in like a straight A's kind of way—more like the finger quotes he didn't apply himself academically kind of way like, this one time he didn't study in comp sci class ALL YEAR and he'd just show up and take the tests and without ever looking at the material, he'd get B's and be like whatever, this stuff is easy let's go play Frisbee—

Suspect 2: So yeah, he comes to me about the coffee thing and I'm like DUH! this will be so easy we'll just get on the carder's forum online to get a few credit card numbers and then I'll use my black box to do some anti-DNS pinning, then piggy back on some hacked routers in China using a proxy server in Panama, and make cash advances using the stealth PayPal account I set up through that Estonian dude with the wolf—