Scammers are using crypto ATMs to steal millions of dollars in the U.S., according to a new report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Miami Herald.

In one case, a 77-year-old Chicago woman lost $9,000 in cash to a fraudster posing as a Federal Trade Commission agent. The money ended in an offshore crypto wallet and the woman has never recovered it, the report said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), offering its first-ever national estimate of the losses, told OCCRP that crypto ATM scams resulted in the theft of over $120 million from the public in 2023. The figure does not include risks related to national security and money-laundering.

Crypto ATM fraud – “hard to track”

The OCCRP says the rising cases of scams related to crypto ATMs, or …