How Crooks Convinced Her To Put $17,500 Into A Bitcoin ATM To 'Secure' Her Money
How Crooks Convinced Her To Put $17,500 Into A Bitcoin ATM To 'Secure' Her Money
Susan Tompor, Detroit Free Press Mon, April 21, 2025 USA TODAY
Stacy Hazinski received one of those annoying text messages that claimed she was about to be charged $114.02 for something she didn't buy. So she called the number, supposedly for her Apple Pay account, to make sure that she didn't get stuck with the bill.
She got stuck talking to scammers.
One simple phone call set off a scheme that ultimately enabled someone to steal her entire income tax refund and drain her savings account at a local credit union.
Filing her taxes early in the year essentially meant little, she told me at her Michigan condo, because now she has nothing to show for it.
She's out $17,500 in all.
Scammers convince you to take cash to a bitcoin ATM
Her story highlights one huge red flag that consumers must watch out for these days — how scammers are convincing you to take cash to a crypto ATM at the local party store, gas station or grocery.
Con artists deceive people with backstories on how they can protect their money or avoid trouble by depositing money in a cryptocurrency ATM.
How to protect yourself: Scam losses worldwide this year are $1 trillion
The crooks — who might pretend to be from Apple, Google, an Internet service provider or even law enforcement — do their research and know where these ATMs are in your neighborhood. They'll tell you to withdraw cash from the bank and give you directions to one of these crypto ATMs.
The crooks even go so far as to call bitcoin ATMS “safety lockers," according to regulators.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel issued a consumer alert April 8 to warn residents about scammers using bitcoin ATMs to defraud consumers.
“Because money sent through bitcoin ATMs is nearly impossible to recover and these machines lack oversight and regulation, they have become an attractive option for criminals engaged in fraud and money laundering,” Nessel said in a statement.
Millions of dollars lost in scams at crypto ATMs
Consumers lost $66 million to crypto ATM fraud in the first six months of 2024, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The actual number is likely much higher as such types of fraud often go unreported, according to the FTC. The FTC said the losses involving these ATMs increased dramatically from $12 million in 2020 to $114 million for all of 2023.
People 60 and over were more than three times as likely as younger adults to report a loss using a bitcoin ATM in the first half of 2024, according to FTC data.
Once the money is deposited into bitcoin, experts warn, it is transferred quickly, making it often impossible to track. Your bank is unlikely to reimburse you because you withdrew the money on your own.
The con artists had her running scared to the ATM
Hazinski, 51, heard slew of scary stories on Feb. 28 — starting with a guy named John from Apple and switching over to a guy named Eric who claimed to be from her credit union — on how scammers were in the process of getting their hands on her federal income tax refund, as well as the rest of her savings.
As part of the scam, she was told by the guy who claimed to be an employee at the credit union that she would need to transfer her cash into a "security" account to protect her savings from someone who was about to send her money into an account at www.poker.com.
What? Why was her money going to cover some online poker tournament? She got terribly nervous, especially since her savings was limited after she had been out of work for a few months.
"And I said, 'I don't gamble,' " Hazinski recalls.
She said she wasn't using her refund to play poker — and she wasn't about to let someone else use her money, either.
"It was so stressful," Hazinski said.
Scammers stayed on the phone to tell her what to do next
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