Am I the only one that finds it suspicious that one of these guys would drop a debit card at a heist?
Like the Silk Road guy, "how could he possibly ask on stack overflow using his real name".
And so on.
There are ten thousands different mistakes that you can make, you need to guard against all of them. And against whatever unknown tech exists.
In this story, that dropped bank card turns out to not be that significant. The real breakthrough was identifying another mule through the video surveillance videos, following him to the airport and putting surveillance on the lockers used to store the cash.
He was also emptying ATMs apparently with witnesses behind him. This is like a bad movie. One of those witnesses might as well be an off-duty cop who could just pull out his gun right there.
People make stupid mistakes.
I always had the impression that Ross suffered from the fatal flaw that he didn't think what he was doing was wrong. He was an evangelical libertarian, and I think he didn't see "not getting caught" as the #1 priority the way a profit oriented criminal would.
What's the bank card for if they just stood there and it spit money out in a timed fashion?
Either it's a misstatement from the author, or law enforcement don't want to reveal how they actually caught them.
It's not illegal to tell tall tales to the press. Maybe they want to protect an informant. Or, maybe they just want to protect some technical dragnet they've set up, for the time being.
- You have to be lucky every time to continue free... I only have to be lucky once to catch you.