Chi-town, IL A recent study talks about scary and heartbreaking ATM scams. It says that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lost over $120 million to these types of fraud in 2023. One of the saddest stories is about a 77-year-old woman from Chicago who lost $9,000 to a con artist who claimed to be a Federal Trade Commission agent. The money was sent to a foreign cryptocurrency wallet, and it hasn’t been found yet.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) says that there are a number of reasons why these scams are becoming more common. Crypto ATM owners don’t have to follow strict identification rules, and laws vary from state to state, which makes it easier for fraudsters to take advantage of people who are weak. Criminals like these often use complex methods to hide their digital footprints, like mixers and bridges that make it harder to find stolen money.
FBI Reports Surge in Scams
When the FBI looked into cryptocurrency ATM scams in 2023, they got more than 4,300 reports. About 2,000 of those reports were from people aged 60 and up. Surprisingly, only about 10% of these cases led to people getting their money back. This shows how hard it is for police to get back lost property.
CoinATMRadar says the problem has gotten worse because there are so many Bitcoin ATMs. There are now more than 32,500 in the U.S., up from just over 4,200 in January 2020. This rise has happened at the same time as an increase in fraud, which is why officials are taking action against criminals.
Because the problem is getting worse, important changes have been made to the law. In April, a New York court sentenced Victoria Jacobs to 18 years in prison for sending $18,000 to a criminal organization using cryptocurrency ATMs. Robert Taylor is also going to be sentenced because he was found guilty of running over 40 illegal crypto ATMs, which helped move $5.6 million in cash into cryptocurrency.
Sonny Meraban, the former CEO of Bitcoin of America, got five years of probation and had to give up $3.9 million in Bitcoin because of his part in these schemes.
