I walked into a convenient store in rural America and saw a BTC ATM near the door.
I touched the screen to check out the interface and the spread. The machine was turned off.
When I asked the clerk about it he said, "We don't want to have anything to do with those scams."
I asked for clarification and he told me that an employee of the store had been social engineered into putting the whole cash register into the machine and sending the BTC to someone over the phone.
He said an elderly man came in with 35K in cash and was feeding it into the machine while talking with someone on the phone. The clerk interrupted the scam and the old man left to go to the other store in town with a BTC ATM.
Luckily the clerk was aware of the other store and called ahead to save the guy from being scammed.
There's no easy solution to these issues.
Replies (12)
This is legit. I’ve know people who’ve fallen for these phone scams
I’ve seen this first hand with family.
Unfortunately, my grandma was a victim of this scam too. She pulled out $20k and used the machine to send it to a bitcoin address. Incredibly sad.
Sad
Dang man, yeah that's awful. I hope she has other savings to lean on
Well known within the industry for many years now that a major use of the atms has been elder fraud, or just fraud in general
Bitcoin ATMs are sketchy af, however you look at it.
I wish it weren't true, but that may be the case
What's the steelman case for btc ATMs? Hard to make one imo
What was the route of attack - phone? The genpop/normie phone scams are getting wild.
Yes phone. They convinced her they found cp on her laptop and needed her to follow the necessary steps or it would be reported to the authorities. They kept urging her to move quickly, pull out cash from her bank using the phrase they gave her, and find a specific bitcoin atm.
I'd say it's the same as the case for a totally free market, which is an argument I can understand, but it's pretty abrupt going from a nerfed many state reality into the cypherpunk wild west.
