Dad lured to Bitcoin ATM by scammer claiming to be son
ABC7 News | A California dad answered an early morning phone call from someone who sounded like his son. He said he’d been arrested for a DUI accident involving a pregnant woman.
It was a scammer impersonating his son. The scammer directed him to contact a defense attorney. The “defense attorney” told him he needed to pay his son’s $15,000 bail using a nearby Bitcoin ATM.
Bitcoin ATMs transfer money directly to cryptocurrency “wallets.” The scammers had successfully manipulated him to believe his son was in danger and needed immediate help. Instead, he’d unknowingly transferred $15,000 — a $100 bill at a time — to scammers.
Once they had the money, the “lawyer” disappeared. He called his son, who was fine. He realized he’d been scammed. Next, he called the Fraud Unit at the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, where attorney Erin West worked.
“The thing about cryptocurrency is it's on a blockchain, which is a ledger,” says West. “We can see every transaction that happens. So, when we were able to see where he sent his money, we were able to send [the ATM company] an email that day and get them to freeze it until we sent a warrant, and then we were able to get that money back for him.”
Getting money back in these cases is extremely rare. And it’s one of the reasons West started the Operation Shamrock nonprofit to investigate and expose these worldwide scams. Her investigation has taken her to Southeast Asia, where she has seen the massive operations firsthand. There, she’s seen the massive compounds built with scam money, where human-trafficked workers are forced to target American victims.
“Their primary industries in Cambodia prior to this were tourism and garments,” she explains. “Today, their primary industry is scamming. It makes up more than half of their GDP and they're coming for us.”
Legal Action against Bitcoin ATM Providers
Last month, the DC attorney general sued Athena Bitcoin, one of the largest Bitcoin ATM purveyors in the U.S. The evidence includes screen captures of older victims on phones as they feed large amounts of cash into the ATMs. According to the lawsuit:
At least 93% of transactions on Athena's devices in DC “are the product of outright fraud”
The median age of victims was 71
The median loss per transaction was $8,000.