‘Devastating’ Scams on the Rise

Clay County Sheriff’s Office public relations manager Sarah Boyd was not surprised to hear in December from a woman targeted by someone pretending to be a sheriff’s deputy. The woman was told she could be arrested for missing jury duty — unless she paid a cash bond.

In cryptocurrency.

MEMBERS ONLY

It was a story the sheriff’s office had heard repeatedly in recent months, as scammers targeted people in the Kansas City region.

But this call came with a twist — and a good ending.

When the woman was at the bank trying to withdraw $7,000, the teller realized something was amiss. The scammer was on the phone with the woman at the time and had told her she couldn’t get off the phone to speak with the teller.

“That’s when the teller wrote her a note that said, ‘You’re being scammed.’ At that point, she realized what was going on and hung up,” says Boyd, who posted the woman’s story on Facebook to warn others.

The woman’s experience was a familiar one, given similar ploys that push victims to deposit cash into cryptocurrency kiosks, which are also known as Bitcoin ATMs. Such scams are becoming increasingly prevalent in Missouri and nationwide, leading to legal and legislative efforts to fight back.

In December, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) launched an investigation into five cryptocurrency kiosk companies after receiving “reports of devastating new scams involving the use of Bitcoin ATMs to prey on Missourians,” the official announced.

LOSSES UP SUBSTANTIALLY

In Clay County, the scams ensnared victims in nearly 150 incidents from 2023 to May 2025, resulting in about $2.5 million in losses, according to county Prosecuting Attorney Zachary Thompson. No one has been arrested for the crimes.

“The majority of these types of offenses aren’t actually reported,” Thompson says. “These are just the ones we know about.”

Such scams are one of many fraud threats facing older adults, according to the Federal Trade Commission. While anyone can be a victim, older adults are “much more likely than younger adults” to report losing money on tech support scams; prize, sweepstakes and lottery scams; romance scams; and government impersonation scams, the FTC said in a December report.

Americans 60 and older have seen a substantial increase in losses to fraud, with reported losses up fourfold since 2020, according to the FTC. The increase was driven largely by reported losses of more than $100,000, the agency said.

Older adults may be more likely to suffer higher losses than younger consumers because they may be more affluent and because the nature of scams has changed, says Kathy Stokes, AARP senior director of fraud prevention programs.

“It used to be maybe five or more years ago, the scams were like, ‘Let’s get a thousand bucks off of them and move on.’ And now they’re holding on for months, creating these trust relationships and taking everything­—­just everything,” she says.

Scams also are growing more complex, often becoming an “amalgamation” of different scam techniques, Stokes says.