US lawmakers urge top cryptocurrency ATM operators to tackle fraud

Seven Democratic US Senators have written to ten of the country’s largest Bitcoin ATM operators, pushing them to solve theft against elderly Americans.

A group of US Senate Democrats, led by Majority Whip and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, has urged ten of the country’s top cryptocurrency ATM operators to promptly combat fraud and protect elderly Americans.

In a Sept. 12 statement, seven Democratic Senators, including Elizabeth Warren, cited Federal Trade Commission data indicating that fraud losses from Bitcoin ATMs (BTMs) totalled $65 million in the first half of the 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,” according to the senators.

The letters, dated Sept. 11, were addressed to the CEOs or top executives of 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, urged each company to “take immediate action” to address concerns that its machines were contributing to “widespread financial fraud against elderly Americans.”

“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 lawmakers wrote.

They cited a July Illinois Times post about a company owner removing a Coinhub ATM, stating that the only people who used it were scam victims, as well as a New York Times report detailing “egregious examples” of scammers coercing elderly Americans into transferring them money through crypto ATMs.

The letters require the firms to respond to a series of questions by Oct. 4 regarding their efforts to combat fraud, such as whether they warn about scams, establish transaction and deposit limitations, and guarantee depositors against fraud.

Earlier this month, the FTC revealed that crypto ATM frauds had increased tenfold since 2020, from $12 million to $144 million, while the FBI reported that $5.6 billion was lost to crypto fraud in 2023, up 45% from

According to the FTC, the median reported loss from Bitcoin ATM fraud was $10,000 in the first six months of this year, with older adults losing more than two out of every three dollars.

At the time of the FTC complaint, a Bitcoin Depot spokeswoman told Cointelegraph that the company puts scam alerts on its computers, 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 after business hours.

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