In early April, volunteers and staff from AARP Fraud Watch Network and AARP Colorado turned up the heat on one issue plaguing Coloradans – cryptocurrency ATM fraud. Scams using crypto ATMs to steal from older Coloradans are on the rise – and they are at the center of SB 79, a bill that was in front of the legislature’s Senate Judiciary Committee February 19. Staff and volunteers were at the hearing to testify in support of the legislation, which implements reasonable protections against cryptocurrency ATM fraud, including daily transaction limits, fraud warning notices, receipt requirements, and requiring operators of crypto ATMs to provide a refund for fraudulent transactions.
Scams
“Crypto ATMs have proliferated across the state,” Karen Moldovan, AARP Colorado advocacy director, said. “While they can be used for legitimate commerce, scammers have found these machines to be an avenue to defraud Coloradans out of tens of thousands of dollars.”
From a recent Colorado AARP post: when someone claiming to be from the U.S. Department of the Treasury told a Colorado senior resident in a phone call last year that his identity had been stolen and used to commit felonies, the Colorado resident was victimized.
The criminal who used a real government official’s name and a Washington, D.C. phone number told the senior, that to protect his money, he needed to withdraw cash from his bank account and deposit it into a cryptocurrency kiosk at a nearby convenience store. The Colorado senior resident had $121,400 stolen in the scam.
Criminals are increasingly using cryptocurrency kiosks, often called crypto ATMs as their preferred method of money transfer because the transactions are extremely difficult for law enforcement to trace. The machines allow customers to convert cash to Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
Here is how the scam works:
1. Perpetrators convince individuals that they have an overdue bill or other financial liability that needs to be acted on quickly.
2. They provide instructions to deposit money into a specific machine, without telling them that the machine is a crypto ATM. It could be one large payment or several small ones.
3. Once the individual completes the transaction, there is no documentation of it and no way to recover their money.
Amy Nofziger, director of AARP’s Fraud Victim Support, was one of the Coloradans testifying in support of SB 79.
“Older Coloradans can be incredibly vulnerable to this type of fraud,” Nofziger said. “Scammers are very convincing in their ploys, and the schemes they use are getting more and more sophisticated.”
Nofziger testified in support of SB 79. Going beyond AARP, several investigators and officers from the Mesa County Sheriff’s Department supported the bill, noting the difficulty they encounter stopping the fraud and recovering Coloradans’ hard-earned money.
The legislation passed unanimously out of the committee. It will now go to the Senate Committee for its second reading.