The FBI says Americans lost at least $333 million to Bitcoin ATM scams in 2025, as the cryptocurrency has continued to gain popularity for use in fraudulent transactions. The law enforcement agency told CNBC that this is a "clear and constant rise" that is "not slowing down." Reported losses to crypto ATM scams first broke $100 million in 2023, with the amount hitting $114 million — this then doubled the following year to $247 million. While the reported losses in 2025 weren't as huge a jump, it's still costing private citizens a huge amount of money, with most scammers targeting older victims.
The authorities are acting against cryptocurrency ATM providers, saying that they're "pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in undisclosed fees on the backs of scam victims." The U.S. Attorney General even sued Athena Bitcoin, with the lawsuit pointing out the 93% of the transactions on its ATMs "are the product of outright fraud," with victims having a median age of 71 years. In its defense, Athena told ABC News that it has "strong safeguards against fraud, including transparent instructions, prominent warnings, and customer education." An Athena rep also said, "Just as a bank isn't held responsible if someone willingly sends funds to someone else, Athena does not control users' decisions."
Earlier this year, we saw one local government take things into its own hands using a power tool to recover almost $32,000 that a victim deposited into a Bitcoin Depot ATM. The Sheriff's office was able to do this after securing a warrant, but the company said that it will seek damages, especially as each machine costs around $14,000. Furthermore, the victim will not be able to immediately get the recovered money, as it will have to go through the legal system before the scammed amount will be returned to them.
The U.S. isn't the only place that is seeing a growing number of crypto ATM scam cases — Australian authorities also said that most crypto ATM users are either scam victims or money mules who were forced to deposit cash into these machines. Cryptocurrency does, of course, have some advantages and legitimate uses. But because it's still fairly new, many don't understand how it works and often assume that it's just like any other bank. And with crypto ATMs becoming more ubiquitous in the U.S., it's also making it much easier for scammers to extort and steal money from their unsuspecting victims.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday January 04, @02:27PM (4 children)
Are these common? I have never seen a Bitcoin ATM out in the wild ever. None of the once in the towns around me are anything but the normal bank once, most of them are either withdraw or deposit or currency exchange. But as far as I know none take or do bitcoins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mojibake Tengu on Sunday January 04, @03:23PM (2 children)
Depends on which cyberpunk civilization you live in. According to Coin ATM Radar map, today in Prague, four operators, Bitomat, Kvakomat, bitomat.com and Coinmat compete on 46 locations with their ATMs and tellers.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Sunday January 04, @03:31PM
s/Bitomat/Bitcoinmat/
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday January 04, @04:11PM
Guess I'm not cyberpunk enough. Looking at the map I can't find a single one in Sweden. Guess I have to go to Finland or Poland.
(Score: 3, Informative) by owl on Monday January 05, @05:02AM
I can't comment on exactly how common, but near me the grocery store I regularly shop at has a bitcoin "ATM" and at least one gas/service station has one as well.
I can't recall seeing anyone actually using either one any time I've been in either location.
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Sunday January 04, @04:11PM (2 children)
Ok, so, it is more like a vending machine, it is not like a traditional ATM. You go, scan your wallet's QR code and buy/sell BTC. I didn't know that. Now I have one more satoshi of knowledge. But I can deposit, so it is half and half.
(Score: 4, Funny) by mrpg on Sunday January 04, @04:12PM
Somebody think of the elder.
(Score: 2) by owl on Monday January 05, @05:04AM
The two I know exist near me look just like the "ATM" machines one would find in a bar so that the patrons who run out of cash can get more cash to keep the liquor (or lap dances, depending upon the exact type of "bar") flowing.
But yes, more like a "vending machine" than an actual bank ATM machine.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fab23 on Sunday January 04, @06:22PM (3 children)
Some TLAs and authorities may need some education. Or they just should sometimes look into their spam folder and read some of the emails to understand what is going on and what some people may get and then even react to. I mostly get such extortion scam emails in my local language, but I also found one in English and I quote it here as complete example:
When you search for the mention Bitcoin wallet bc1q9yar0adx2uu9wh8y54wgt3xy8m6rkxv3tlawf0 [kagi.com] you will probably find enough sites which also report the exact same and warn of scam. With that information it is also for sure that whoever tries to extort money (Bitcoin) from you does not know if you really payed within the mention time limit or not. So this confirms that this is a scam. Don't pay!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05, @12:53AM (2 children)
Yea, I got something very similar maybe 5 years ago? Obvious BS since the camera on my older laptop is physically blocked. Mic is turned off with a button (but this may be possible to hack??)
Delete and move on, I'd almost forgotten the whole annoying episode until your post reminded me.
(Score: 2) by owl on Monday January 05, @05:09AM (1 child)
All of these "we have hacked your computer and recorded you with your camera" emails are scams.
They rely upon gullible individuals taking the bait and trying to "buy their freedom". I've gotten plenty of these at a couple spam trap email addresses I have, and they are always a good laugh because the Linux system I read them on (when I bother to look at what the spam filters filtered out) using mutt has no cameras attached to it at all.
(Score: 2) by Bentonite on Tuesday January 06, @02:41AM
Linux system?
Mutt doesn't care about what kernel you use - but it does care about whether it has access to many dependencies, such as gdbm, gnuTLS, gsasl, GNU libidn2, GNU gpgme and GNU ncurses (yes, every dependency in mutt is technically optional and there sometimes there are inferior alternatives, but if you proceed to disable all of such dependencies, or don't use the GNU implementation, you end up with mutt except it can't do email properly, can't store mail properly and/or can't do GnuPG properly).
I think I've gotten only 2 of such spam mails on my GNU systems (read in GNU Emacs of course), as it seems such confidence extortion tricks have no success at all when targeting self-hosted mail servers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday January 04, @06:27PM (4 children)
What do libertarians and criminals both want? A government small enough that it can't stop them from doing whatever they want.
Ergo, stuff created by libertarians to try to keep the governments of the world off their backs (which BTC was at least in theory about) will attract organized crime trying to keep the governments of the world off their backs.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 05, @01:42PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 06, @04:18AM (1 child)
I'm not arguing that libertarianism is particularly wrong as a political philosophy. I'm simply arguing that libertarian interests and criminal interests are often identical, and what helps one is sometimes used to help the other.
And when I say "criminal", I'm not talking about the people doing victimless stuff like selling a bit of pot. I mean genuinely extremely nasty people and organizations, like the sort that engage in large-scale human trafficking to force decent people either into scamming or prostitution under a very real threat of being killed if they don't comply. (And to be clear: I have no particular moral problem with prostitution by an adult who chooses that line of work, but that is not what we're talking about here, we're talking about 14-year-olds sold into slavery.) The kind of people who think nothing of murdering entire families, children included, because one of them might say something to the authorities.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 06, @02:51PM
So what? When you artificially restrict your scope enough any two groups of humans have interests that are identical. It's just not a useful observation.
And consider this. For the point I made, it transcends your argument by merely making a large category of crime not crime. Thus libertarians would have "identical" interests to a new set of non-criminals.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bentonite on Tuesday January 06, @03:19AM
I am not a libertarian, but a legitimate government exists for the sole purpose of serving its people - the current arrangements where citizens are regarded as government property and are treated like cattle are not legitimate governments.
Rules and regulations and laws that apply to behaviors and actions that do not have victims and rather serve the purpose of not allowing fun, or not allowing non-approved damage to civilians (government property) are not legitimate.
Furthermore, governmental violations (with the assistance of businesses) of basic human rights like privacy is never acceptable.
Governments should mostly stick to maintaining transport and infrastructure and preventing repeat occurrences of actual harmful behavior - for example dumping of toxic waste and ensuring murders don't happen again and also to execute businesses if that is what is required to stop such business from continuing to commit crimes against humanity.
Yes, reasonable regulations that apply to big business that require those actually clean up their messes, rather than getting away with spilling a bunch of chlorine and not cleaning it up and also getting away with selling PFoA's and PFoS's products and dumping the waste products into a pond also also saying it's okay to dump it in a field as it would biodegrade and getting away with that too.
The primary focus on business regulations should really be to prevent businesses from selling mislabeled products - the current case where businesses are allowed to omit some of the ingredients off the ingredients list and/or fail to state what the packaging or product is made of (for example failing to state that the packaging and/or product contains x PFoA's and y PFoS's) is unacceptable.
Organized crime usually only exists because of governments - the business of the illegal drug trade would end immediately if you could go to the pharmacy and purchase 10 grams of 99.999% pure heroin, or whatever less lethal drug of your choice labelled with all known side effects and usage instructions and with appropriate measurement and administration equipment as an optional bundle for a reasonable sum.
I should be able to purchase Uranium etc for nuclear reactor use in my back yard.
Bitcoin is simply a currency and the government has no business as to how that currency is used - it only has business prosecuting actual harmful actions.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday January 04, @08:27PM
They got just the president for them then...