Paperback, 432 pages
English language
Published June 19, 2025 by Quercus.
Never Saw Me Coming
How I Outsmarted the FBI and the Entire Banking System--And Pocketed $40 Million
by Tanya Smith
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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 and neighbours, clearing their overdue electricity bills with a single phone call. Eventually, as she tested the limits and realized she could get past any gatekeeper, she began to understand the power of money and what it could do.
Over the years, Tanya ‘confiscated’ some $40 million in cash and commodities from US banks, using hacked wire transfers. It didn’t take long before the FBI was on her tail. But …
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 and neighbours, clearing their overdue electricity bills with a single phone call. Eventually, as she tested the limits and realized she could get past any gatekeeper, she began to understand the power of money and what it could do.
Over the years, Tanya ‘confiscated’ some $40 million in cash and 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 and putting Tanya’s life in jeopardy before finally sending her to Federal prison (where she escaped twice) with the longest sentence ever given for a white-collar crime.