September 14, 2026

Bitcoin ATM Scams: What to Do Before You Pay, and After

If a caller, a text, or a pop-up tells you to take cash to a Bitcoin machine, stop. It does not matter whether they say they are from your bank, the police, Medicare, or a company whose name you recognize. That instruction is how the theft happens.

A caller may know personal details about you and still be a scammer. Names, addresses, and even the last four digits of an account can be bought or guessed.

Why criminals steer people to these machines

You have probably walked past one. They look like ATMs and sit in gas stations, convenience stores, and grocery stores. You insert cash and use the machine to send cryptocurrency to a wallet address. A scammer will often send you a QR code to scan at the machine, which points the payment at their own wallet.

Investigators can trace Bitcoin transactions, but getting the money back is a different matter. There is no chargeback the way there is with a card. Scammers often rush you, or insist that you stay on the phone while you drive to the machine.

What the call usually sounds like

The stories vary. The instruction at the end does not.

"This is the fraud department. Someone is draining your account. We need to move your money somewhere safe while we investigate."

"There is a warrant in your name for a missed jury summons. You can settle it today and avoid arrest."

"Your Medicare number has been used in another state. We need to verify your funds before we can lock it."

"Your computer has a virus and your bank login is exposed. Stay on the line, and do not mention this to your bank, because an employee there may be involved."

That last instruction is worth noticing. If someone asking for money tells you to hide the payment from your family or your bank, stop and get help checking the request.

What the numbers look like

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received 13,460 complaints about cryptocurrency kiosks in 2025, with reported losses of about $389 million. That was a 58 percent rise in losses in one year.

People aged 60 and older filed 6,188 of those complaints and reported about $257.5 million of the losses, roughly two thirds of the total.

Those are only the people who filed a report.

If you are at the machine now

Put the cash away and end the call. You do not owe the caller an explanation.

Look up the organization yourself, using the number on your bank card, a statement, or a bill. Never the number the caller gave you, and never a number from the message itself.

Ask someone you trust to look at the request with you before you do anything else.

If you have already paid

Move fast, because some states now give you a legal right to a refund and the deadlines are short.

Arizona is the clearest example. Under a law that took effect in September 2025, the company that owns the machine has to refund an eligible victim in full, fees included, if the fraud is reported within 30 days to both the operator and law enforcement. In its first year the Arizona Attorney General's Office recovered $171,332 for 35 people that way. Several other states have passed similar laws with their own deadlines, some as short as two weeks. Look up your own state today rather than after the weekend.

Call the kiosk operator. Their support number is on the machine and on your receipt. Tell them the transaction was fraud and that you want a refund.

File a police report, or report to your state Attorney General. Where these refund laws exist, they generally require this as well as the call to the operator.

Keep the receipt, the wallet address, and the messages. Under the refund laws these are what support your claim, and investigators ask for the same things.

Call your bank's fraud team, particularly if you shared account details or passwords.

If anyone still has remote access to your computer, disconnect it from the internet. Use a different device you trust to change your passwords, and get help removing the software before you use that computer for banking again.

Report it to the FBI at ic3.gov and to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov.

If you would rather speak to a person, the Justice Department runs a National Elder Fraud Hotline on 833-372-8311. It is staffed, and they will walk you through the reporting.

One more warning. After a loss, people are often approached by someone promising to recover the money for an upfront fee. Recovery scammers buy lists of previous victims, so knowing the details of your loss does not make their offer trustworthy. Never pay an upfront fee to someone who contacts you out of the blue promising to get your money back. The FTC explains this under refund and recovery scams.

Being deceived here does not mean you were careless. The caller may have practiced the same story on many people before reaching you.

Checking an address before you send

If you have been given a wallet address, Shieldle's Safe Wallet Check uses AI with web search to look for public warnings about that address and explain what it finds in plain language. It is part of a subscription, with the first week free, and you set up an account before using it.

That makes it something for a quiet moment before you send anything, not for a caller who is rushing you right now. If someone is on the phone telling you to go to a machine, no address check changes the answer. The rule at the top of this page is the only one you need.

It has limits worth knowing too. It can miss warnings that exist, and it can return a reassuring result for an address that belongs to a criminal. A "Safe" result does not prove the person on the other end is trustworthy.

Source: FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Internet Crime Report.