A group of United States Senate Democrats led by Majority Whip and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin has urged 10 of the country’s largest crypto ATM operators to immediately tackle fraud and protect elderly Americans.
In a Sept. 12 statement, seven Democratic Senators, including Elizabeth Warren, cited Federal Trade Commission data noting that fraud losses from Bitcoin ATMs (BTMs) reached $65 million in the first half of this year.
“Criminals are targeting elderly Americans, with people age 60 and older more than three times as likely to report a loss using a BTM than younger adults,” the Senators said.
The Sept. 11 dated letters were addressed to the CEO’s or top executives at Bitcoin Depot, CoinFlip, RockItCoin, Bitstop, Coinhub, Unbank, Athena Bitcoin, Byte Federal, Cash2Bitcoin and Margo.
The letters, co-signed by Durbin, Warren, Senators Richard Blumenthal, Jack Reed, Tina Smith, Peter Welch, and Sheldon Whitehouse, called on each firm to “take immediate action” to address reports their machines were contributing to “widespread financial fraud against elderly Americans.”
Source: Dick Durbin
“As companies like yours have staged BTMs in a variety of businesses — sometimes even paying businesses to host your BTMs — there has been a marked increase in Bitcoin scams impacting elderly Americans,” the Senators wrote.
They pointed to a July Illinois Times report of a business owner removing a Coinhub ATM, claiming the only people who used it were scam victims and a New York Times report that outlined “egregious examples” of scammers coering elderly Americans into sending them funds via crypto ATMs.
The letters ask the firms to answer a series of questions by Oct. 4 on the actions undertaken to address fraud, including if the firms warn about scams, have transaction and deposit limits and if they insure depositors against fraud.
Related: CFTC partners up to warn on crypto pig butchering scams
Earlier this month, the FTC reported that crypto ATM scams had risen tenfold since 2020, from $12 million to $144 million, while the FBI said $5.6 billion was lost to crypto fraud in 2023, up 45% from 2022.
The FTC said the median reported loss to Bitcoin ATM-linked fraud was $10,000 in the first six months of this year, with more than two of every three dollars lost by an older adult.
At the time of the FTC’s report, a Bitcoin Depot spokesperson told Cointelegraph the company posts scam warnings on its machines which “have screen prompts that warn customers of scam potentials.”
Bitcoin Depot, RockItCoin, Coinhub and Bitstop did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside of business hours.
Crypto-Sec: 2 auditors miss $27M Penpie flaw, Pythia’s ‘claim rewards’ bug