Encryption ATMs become a scam black hole, siphoning off $240 million in half a year.

A 71-year-old real estate intermediary was deceived by someone on a dating app. The other party claimed to be a “Mike,” a defense contractor engineer, and after two months of sweet talk, asked to borrow money, requesting her to deposit the money into an encryption ATM machine — a self-service terminal that looks like a regular ATM.

She believed it. A total of 19 transactions, depositing $98,300. In the end, there was not a single cent left, and “Mike” also vanished into thin air.

This is not an isolated case. The encryption ATMs that are densely appearing in convenience stores and gas stations across the United States are becoming concentrated tools for fraud. FBI data is heartbreaking:

Last year, 11,000 complaints were received, resulting in a loss of $247 million; in the first seven months of this year, another $240 million was defrauded. TRM Labs analysis found that the illegal transaction ratio of these machines is over 17 times the average level of the entire encryption industry.

The most frightening thing is that once the money is converted into encryption, the scammers can instantly transfer it abroad, and law enforcement can hardly track it down.

More than ten states in the U.S., including California and Illinois, have begun to restrict this thing. However, operators like Bitcoin Depot are still arguing that fraudulent transactions only account for 2-3% of their total. The implication is: it's all a low-probability event, and it has nothing to do with us.

One can only say that behind affordability and convenience often lie significant pitfalls. Especially in the case of scams targeting the elderly, they have evolved from phone scams to scams involving physical machines.