Data the Federal Trade Commission provided to NBC News show the amount of money consumers have reported losing to scams involving Bitcoin ATMS rose ne

Bitcoin ATM scams are soaring — and older adults are increasingly the victims

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2024-09-02 21:00:07

Data the Federal Trade Commission provided to NBC News show the amount of money consumers have reported losing to scams involving Bitcoin ATMS rose nearly tenfold since 2020, topping $110 million in 2023.

And older people are getting roped in the most. The agency said consumers over age 60 were more than three times as likely as younger adults to say they were duped out of cash in these schemes.

"Scammers are using these machines as a way to take money from people more than we've seen in the past," Emma Fletcher, a senior data researcher at the FTC, told NBC News.

Bitcoin ATMs look like traditional ATMs and operate similarly, in that they can be used for both deposits and withdrawals, but the transactions involve cryptocurrencies.

The machines are banned in some countries, including the U.K. and Singapore, but they're legal in the U.S. According to one estimate, there are nearly 32,000 nationwide today, up from just over 4,000 at the start of 2020. The kiosks can now be found in high-traffic locations like convenience stores, gas stations and supermarkets — something that has helped fuel the fraud uptick, federal authorities say.