The true story of how a middle-class Black girl from Minneapolis became one of the single biggest threats to the United States banking system. Tanya Smith fancied herself a folk hero, a kind of Robin Hood, using her powers of persuasion to buck the system and help the poor and needy. It started innocently enough, with calls to celebrities’ houses with her teenage twin sister. Soon, Tanya realised she could convince utility companies to amend the balances of her friends, relatives and neighbours, clearing their overdue electricity bills with a single phone call. Eventually, as she tested the limits & realized she could get past any gatekeeper, she started to want the actual money herself. By the time she was 18, Tanya had ‘confiscated’ some 40 million in cash & commodities from US banks, using hacked wire transfers. It didn’t take long before the FBI was on her tail. But when interviewing her, they made clear that they were using her to get to the person actually running things – clearly, she wasn’t smart enough to do this on her own (Black people she was told, rob people, they don’t hack computers). Thus began a cat and mouse game with the authorities that would drive her to unthinkable limits, breaking the hearts of her parents, putting Tanya’s life in jeopardy, and costing her custody of two children before finally sending her to Federal prison (where she escaped twice) with the longest sentence ever given for a white-collar crime.
