Andrés Sepúlveda, Colombian Hacker, Admits To Rigging Enrique Peña Nieto Votes, More Elections

Last year, Andrés Sepúlveda, a former employee of a Colombian presidential candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga from the 2014 political elections, admitted to have intercepted communications of FARC negotiators, of the top guerrilla leader Rodrigo Londoño, alias “Timochenko,” and of Liberal ex-Senator Piedad Cordoba, among others. At the time, he accepted the prosecution’s offer of a reduced penalty in exchange for his cooperation. After verifying the legality of the agreement, Sepúlveda was convicted guilty of five charges, including illegal interception, abusing access to classified information, espionage and use of illegal software according to the Bogota court.

Sepúlveda decided to finally open up to Bloomberg Businessweek in his first interview since being sentenced to 10 years in prison, which he is serving now. He first admitted to have rigged elections in, at least, eight Latin American countries including Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama and Costa Rica.

When talking about working for Enrique Peña Nieto’s successful campaign, Sepúlveda says it was the most complex, but the best paid job he’s ever done. With a budget of $600,000, “he led a team of hackers that stole campaign strategies, manipulated social media to create false waves of enthusiasm and derision, and installed spyware in opposition offices,” Bloomberg reported. They even sent out hate ads about the other two candidates, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Josefina Vázquez Mota.

“My job was to do actions of dirty war and psychological operations, black propaganda, rumors—the whole dark side of politics that nobody knows exists but everyone can see,” he told Bloomberg in Spanish.

Sepúlveda also spoke about his connection to Miami-based political consultant Juan José Rendón (which Rendón thoroughly denies, but was proven with emails), and said he was “dazzled” and saw him as a mentor and genius. “I did what I liked, I was paid well and traveled. It was the perfect job.”

The professional hacker said he found social media is the key, and even wrote a software program called Social Media Predator, which can create and manage “an army of Twitter accounts at the same time. “When I realized that people believe what the Internet says more than reality, I discovered that I had the power to make people believe almost anything.”

Does he stand by what he did? Absolutely. “I did it with full conviction and under a clear objective, to end dictatorship and socialist governments in Latin America,” he said. “I have always said that there are two types of politics—what people see and what really makes things happen. I worked in politics that are not seen.”

When asked if he thinks the U.S. election is being rigged, he responded convinced, “I’m 100 percent sure it is.”