Arizona Law Aims to Stop Crypto ATM Scams

Gale Barr, a nurse practitioner living in Goodyear, got a voicemail on her 70th birthday this past October. The caller said he was a deputy sheriff and asked her to contact him about an important legal matter. Barr was curious. So, she returned the call.

She had two citations, he said, for failing to report for jury duty. A withdrawal of $9,260 from a bank account would take care of the legal issue, he said. All she had to do was deposit the cash into a Circle K convenience store cryptocurrency kiosk (also called a crypto ATM).

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Barr was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment after COVID, and she says that may have made her more vulnerable. “I was frightened,” she says—and also worried about going to jail. “I thought it was real.”

Barr deposited the cash. Then the “deputy sheriff” told her she had another citation. This one was for $12,000. She told the man she had only $3,000 in her account, and he said that would be enough. She headed to withdraw the money from a different bank branch, where a suspicious manager broke the news that she had been scammed.

The money had been set aside to help care for her son’s mental and physical challenges. “I just cried,” she says. “I worked for that money, for my son.”

But thanks to an Arizona law passed last May that aims to clamp down on cryptocurrency ATM fraud, Barr was able to get all her money returned from the ATM operator. The law requires that ATM operators issue full refunds to those who report to local law enforcement or the attorney general’s office that they have been victims of fraud within 30 days of the transaction.

AARP advocated for the law as part of its ongoing efforts — including prevention programs and anti-fraud resources — to teach older Americans how to stay safe.

With ATM crypto scams, the scammers use Bitcoin machines, typically found at convenience stores. They ask consumers to deposit cash withdrawn from their bank accounts into these machines, which then convert the cash to cryptocurrency. A QR code that the criminals provide allows the money to be deposited into the perpetrator’s crypto account, and the scammer remains anonymous.