A Springfield man has removed a once-prominent feature of his business after he witnessed an alarming trend.
"One hundred percent of the time that we saw somebody at the machine they were being scammed," said Matthieu Fortin. "So I was like, this machine has to go. I'm not going to be a part of that."
In early June, Fortin decided to remove the bitcoin ATM that he had installed just a few months before at Upper Limits Midwest, Inc., a vape shop near the Second Street and South Grand Avenue intersection. Fortin was being paid $300 a month by machine owner CoinFlip to have the bitcoin ATM available in his vape shop, but he no longer wanted to make it easy for scammers to prey on unsuspecting victims.
Fortin said the first person who came in to use the bitcoin ATM at his business was an elderly woman who was on the phone. The woman was trying to put thousands of dollars into the machine but was having difficulty because she didn't understand the process. Several weeks later another elderly woman came in while talking on the phone and had deposited $5,000 of the $10,000 she had brought with her before one of Fortin's employees stopped the woman and told her she was being scammed.
"As soon as you put the money into the bitcoin ATM it's gone, you can't get it back," Fortin said. "Scammers find these vulnerable people that aren't up on the latest technologies and they scare them on the phone, they tell them they are from the bank or the FBI and they are being watched, and they need to drop the money into this bitcoin machine."
The woman who was scammed for $5,000 initially agreed to be interviewed for this story but later changed her mind. But Fortin gave her scammer a piece of his mind.
"I took her phone and told the scammer, 'It's up, man,' and said some not very nice words to him and told him to never call the lady back," Fortin said. "But as soon as we hung up, he called again. I was so enraged by that."
Megen Veselack is the purchasing manager at Upper Limits Midwest. She witnessed scam victims trying to use the bitcoin ATM machine and was able to stop some of them in time. Veselack was also there on the day that the machine was removed from the business.
"When the armored car people came to take cash out of the machine I said, 'All of that money was scammed from someone who looks just like your grandma,'" Veselack said.
Another Springfield vape shop, which requested that we not use its name in this story, still has a bitcoin ATM but has taped a prominent fraud warning sign below the transaction screen to alert customers who may have been directed to the machine by scammers. A representative of the business added that someone impersonating the bitcoin machine company called recently and tried to get the business itself to deposit "seed cash" into the machine, but the business didn't fall for it.
"While cryptocurrencies can be used for legitimate purposes by law-abiding individuals, it is often used by criminals online for illicit purposes such as securities fraud, consumer and investment fraud, money laundering and extortion, to name a few," said Aaron Van Hoff, FBI Springfield cyber supervisory special agent. "It is a desirable form of payment used by criminals for its expediency and anonymity to conduct domestic and global financial transactions. Because criminals frequently request payment in cryptocurrency, it is imperative that the public be educated on the indicators of scams and fraud to protect themselves, their communities and loved ones."
A basic rule of thumb: Don't believe anyone who calls you on the phone, regardless of who they claim to be, if they ask you to take your money and put it into a cryptocurrency machine.
The FBI also warns people about newer scams where victims are approached by people who offer work-from-home, online jobs that require deposits, sometimes in cryptocurrency, of the victim's own money as part of the job. At first the victims appear to be making a salary or commission, but soon find that their money is gone.
According to Wikipedia, cryptocurrency is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that does not rely on any central authority, such as a government or a bank, to uphold or maintain it. Bitcoin was started in 2009 and was the first cryptocurrency to be released, and since then nearly 40,000 bitcoin ATMs have been placed around the world.
According to each company's website, CoinFlip has bitcoin ATMs placed in Springfield at three convenience stores, three vape shops and a liquor store; Bitcoin Depot has machines at numerous convenience stores, a wireless phone store, grocery stores and a liquor store; Byte Federal has a machine at an international foods store; and RockitCoin has a machine at a convenience store.
FBI crime statistics for 2023 show that the agency received 1,257 cryptocurrency fraud complaints last year in Illinois totaling $122,929,185 in losses. That's up from 875 complaints and $56,212,989 in losses during 2022 and 900 complaints and $29,271,342 in losses during 2021. But those are just the crimes that are reported – the actual numbers are likely much higher.
In the last year-and-a-half, the Illinois Attorney General's Office has received approximately 20 complaints related to bitcoin and cryptocurrency, four of which were related to consumers who reported a scam in which they were convinced to deposit money via a cryptocurrency ATM, according to spokesperson April McLaren.
Meanwhile, Fortin has some words of advice for business owners who choose to keep the bitcoin ATM machines in their local establishements.
"People that are hosting these machines on their property need to stay diligent and watch what is going on," Fortin said. "If you see somebody standing by the machine talking on the phone, it's probably a scam."
