She Defrauded Apps Like Uber and Instacart of Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars. Meet Priscila, Queen of the Rideshare Mafia

She’d agelong taken comfortableness that WhatsApp and Proton Mail, the email work she’d utilized for the apps, were encrypted. She utilized an alias, Carol, connected her enactment telephone truthful clients couldn’t easy snitch connected her. Now the carnal grounds was gone too. (“Sweet illusion,” she wrote me.) For a mates of weeks aft the purge, Barbosa forced herself to halt making accounts.

She spent New Year’s successful Miami Beach, wherever she posted a photograph of herself wearing Gucci sunglasses and holding a frozen mai tai the size of her head. She shared the pic with the Mafia.

Someone quipped back, “Find me, FBI.”

As 2020 turned to 2021 and Barbosa continued making accounts, a debased hum of dread invaded her idle moments. She started to ponder an exit.

She confided to a Mafia pal that she was frightened of losing everything. News successful February didn’t help: A 30-year-old Brazilian named Douglas Goncalves had been arrested for moving nether a stolen individuality connected Instacart. It was the archetypal clip Barbosa had heard of transgression consequences for a fake profile, and she recognized the suspect’s name: Goncalves, she says, had texted her a mates of weeks earlier astir getting an account. His long-winded answers to her accustomed vetting questions annoyed her, and she ghosted him, she recalls. But the texts mightiness inactive beryllium sitting connected his phone.

Fonseca, Barbosa’s DoorDash partner, besides started to worry. Too galore radical were hawking accounts, licenses, and Social Security numbers successful his WhatsApp groups. “Everybody knew this weaponry would detonate someday,” helium said. “People are anserine and don't instrumentality care.”

Barbosa thought astir going legit, getting backmost into the nutrient business, opening a Brazilian steakhouse. She figured startup costs astatine astir $50,000; she had that magnitude galore times over. She googled astir to spot what benignant of permits she’d need.

Still, her frauds kept compounding. Uber was present rejecting the doctored ID photos; she bought a printer to make carnal fake licenses. She had much than 50 lawsuit accounts progressive connected assorted platforms, and caller radical kept texting her, often with a woeful tale. To calm her fraying nerves, she told herself that with truthful galore radical successful the accounts trade, immoderate doing much audacious things than she was, wherefore would she get successful trouble? One Mafia member, she says, was moving a squad that spoofed DoorDash deliveries for nutrient that, successful reality, was ne'er picked up oregon delivered.

“I had truthful galore chances to stop, but I didn’t,” she wrote me. “It looked similar an addiction you know.”

In April 2021, portion Barbosa was cooking dinner, a substance pinged her phone. Her greenish paper had been approved. Barbosa screamed; she called her parents successful tears. Then she threw unneurotic a enactment for the adjacent nighttime to celebrate. When Fonseca arrived, helium squeezed done the loud, packed location and grabbed immoderate Brazilian barbecue. Outside connected the backmost porch, helium recovered Barbosa, successful cut-off shorts and a halter top, swigging overflowing champagne from the bottle.

If you inquire Barbosa erstwhile she was happiest, she’ll accidental it was that moment: “Everything was perfect.” She had a greenish card. She had the location and the (real) fellow and the Porsche that she wanted. She booked a round-trip ticket—first class—to sojourn her household successful Brazil for 2 weeks successful precocious May. She bought Versace sneakers, due to the fact that wherefore not. She was going to unfastened her steakhouse, wed her boyfriend, and, down the line, determination into the location she’d physique successful Florida. Just 3 years aft landing astatine JFK, she had risen to the apical of a shadiness Silicon Valley gig economy. She’d hacked her mode to the American Dream.