Westlake police have reported a rise in the menace of Bitcoin ATM scams in the Ohio area, noting that criminals are now targeting residents. In its report, the Westlake police mentioned that a couple was saved by a bank manager from Chase Bank, preventing them from being scammed out of $17,000.
According to reports, the couple entered the bank to withdraw $17,000 which was meant for what they thought was a warrant from the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office. The bank manager realized that the move was out of character and informed the police of the development.
The Westlake police mentioned that while the couple were prevented from being scammed, two residents involved in two different incidents were not so lucky.
Westlake police detail scammers’ modus operandi
According to Captain Jerry Vogel of the Westlake Police Department, the clerk at the bank did a very nice job calling their attention to the transaction. “The customer did figure out they were going to be scammed if they took this money out and put it in a buy gift card or put it into a crypto ATM, they were going to lose this money forever,” Captain Vogel said.
“Maybe it’s the Social Security Administration. Maybe it’s Microsoft indicating that you have a virus, a terrible virus, on your computer, and you need to jump through these hoops to get rid of the virus,” Captain Vogel said. But he stressed that most of these things are just scare tactics, noting that their perfect victims are the older population because they get a little more scared than other age ranges in the population.
In the second case, the victim wanted to solve an issue about a device and input a search string to find the number of Microsoft support on Google. After getting a response from the search engine, she clicked on the first entry in the search without scrutinizing it. Instead of getting through to Microsoft support, she was calling a scammer in what is known as “search engine poisoning.”
In this case, the victim was asked to withdraw $40,000 to protect her account from being emptied. The fake Microsoft call center employee told her that she had a virus on her computer which was obtained from child porn from China and an illegal drug website from the same place. She was told that these websites were going to withdraw the money unless she did it by herself.
According to the Westlake police report, the victim went to a gas station that had a Bitcoin ATM and deposited $20,000. A clerk at the station noticed what was going on and tried to stop her but it was too late. Fortunately, she still had the other $20,000 with her.
Cyber analyst warns about the uptick in Bitcoin ATM crimes
According to cyber analyst Alex Hamerstone, most of these scams start with a typical sense of urgency. He mentioned that scammers usually make it look like they are trying to help the victim evade a hack or an attack before they strike. “If someone’s calling you out of the blue, demanding money, threatening you, and it has to do with Bitcoin, it’s going to be a scam,” Hamerstone said.
He added that the police will never call anybody before they initiate an arrest, meaning that if the police are going to arrest anyone, they will come to their location to effect the arrest. “There are very few absolutes in the world, but 100% the IRS will never take your tax bill. They’ll never take your tax payment using gift cards,” he added.
In another incident that occurred in Westlake, the police mentioned that a victim was asked to deposit $5,500 into a Bitcoin ATM at Sam’s convenience store after receiving a call from the Social Security Administration. According to reports, the owner has promised to remove the machine within the next month.
“I just advise you to be very wary of anything that directs you to buy gift cards or put cash into an ATM,” Captain Vogel said. He also added that most of all transactions that have to do with crypto ATMs always end up being scams.
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