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Badge Scams
A fake sheriff's deputy almost convinced a retiree to feed $5,000 into a bitcoin ATM to "pay bail"
In Texas, Maria, 72, received fake court documents by text impersonating the Travis County Sheriff's Office, threatening her with arrest for missing jury duty. A voice posing as an officer calmly walked her by phone to a "crypto kiosk" at a grocery store to deposit the money as supposed bail. Only once she had the machine in front of her did she snap out of it and back away. According to regulators cited by the outlet, this type of kiosk has been used to steal $56 million from Texans in the past year.
This type of scam, known as a government impersonation scam, combines fear of legal consequences with manufactured urgency to pressure victims into acting without thinking it through. Crypto ATMs are scammers' preferred destination precisely because, unlike a bank transfer, money deposited as bitcoin is nearly impossible to recover once it's gone.
Source: Texas Tribune →Watch out, Grandma.