Texas Sheriffs Crack Bitcoin ATM with Power Tools to Retrieve $32,000
decrypt.co
decrypt.co
If the bitcoin ATMs have to bear the cost of restitution for scams, they’ll raise fees to cover it and/or implement measures to make their product less useful for scammers. If that makes their business nonviable, so be it.
Whether that constitutes proof beyond a reasonable doubt is arguable, so I wouldn't be surprised if they claw this cash back. But the core truth isn't really in question.
Limited strings-attached IOU that’s worse in every way than the cash paid for them.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine
Are you saying the gas station owner has some liability?
>Are you saying the gas station owner has some liability?
Sometimes, yes, helping create a situation makes you partially liable even if the individual pieces of what you're doing are legal.
I do however agree with your post on general. Bitcoin (and all other crypto currencies) is used for money laundering, speculation, doing things that would be illegal with properly regulated assets and for buying illegal things like drugs.
It's been around for quite some time, if there were more use cases we would already know by now. There has also been no substantial development since Etherium "let's make it turing complete because what could go wrong lol" and the world pretty much agreed that it's a bad idea to couple money transfer logic to publicly available code while a bug can make you lose all your money connected to that logic.
It's not like it wouldn't be possible in general. But nobody cares and obviously nobody sees how serious development would lead to anything useful (very few counter-examples like the people that created Monero).
Private blockchains between semi-trusted entities that need to keep accounts between them are great. It really is just a shared ledger, a shared database with the mechanics for keeping accounts in a way that's mathematically trusted so no one party has to own the ledger. This is good for banks settling accounts between each other which they very have to do nightly for a variety of reasons.
What prevent people claiming fraud again and again?
This is why we need courts, not police with power tools.
Have a feeling this is just rage bait
This has led to the situation that doing a wire transfer regularly leads to intervention by the bank’s anti fraud team. This attitude has created a huge cost and risk overhead for all the banks, it forces inconvenience on consumers, and it hurts productivity of the economy.
A better way to combat fraud would be to drive improvements to the telephone network. Regulate to make the networks enforce accuracy of the phone numbers they are displaying, give the feature to reliably blacklist phone numbers, make the phone providers monitor for patterns of behaviour that look like scammer or mass marketing activity. There is no good reason that the phone companies should not have been expected to reach these standards decades ago. These fixes would assist with other law enforcement matters, such as tracing prank emergency services calls. But it requires meaningful work from policy makers, and it is not glamorous, so that never gets done.
And this kind of crime is 99% of the businesses for these ATMs.
Your inability to reverse transactions implies you're taking on a very high risk and should be vetting your customers very carefully. “But defi!” is not an excuse when you know that these ATM's are used for this purpose.
Looks like scam callers allegedly direct people to use the machines to facilitate transactions that cannot be reversed.
“But crypto!” is irrelevant; don't engage in providing high-risk services without looking into what the risks actually are and who is legally responsible for absorbing them.
Does western union reverse transactions? To my knowledge, they do not. Yes they co-operate with police, but so do licensed bitcoin ATM operators.
Also "defi" is just ponzi schemes. The only real use for crypto has been using it as money. People buy recreational drugs, yes. They also buy medicine, data privacy services, or donate to political causes that their government makes it risky to associate with. Depending on the coin it has the valued properties of being permissionless (can't be debanked), stable (USD-tether compared to local tin-pot currency), anonymous (monero). You may be lucky enough to have access to lots of stable currency which you can keep in a reliable bank account in a country that lets you buy everything you need, but don't make the mistake of believing that's the case for everybody.
It makes a lot of sense to seek ways to stop the scams. Distrust is expensive in a society. Targeting the money changers is certainly an idea, we'll see if it works. I predict nothing will change until the people who are running the fraud operations actually go to prison.
https://www.propublica.org/article/walmart-financial-service...
The rule is applied fairly evenly imo
https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/refunds/western-union-refund...
“What is this case about? For years, many people who lost money to scams sent their payment through a Western Union wire transfer. Scammers contacted people and promised prizes, loans, jobs, discounted products or other financial rewards in exchange for money upfront. They also pretended to be family members in need of cash, or law enforcement officers demanding payment. The scammers told people to send money through Western Union. No one received the cash, prizes or services they were promised.
Because of joint investigations by the FTC, the Justice Department, and the U. S. Postal Inspection Service, Western Union agreed to pay $586 million and admitted to aiding and abetting wire fraud. The Justice Department is now using that money to provide refunds to people who were tricked into using Western Union to pay scammers.”
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2017/01/...
“In its agreement with the Justice Department, Western Union admits to criminal violations including willfully failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and aiding and abetting wire fraud.”
Bitcoin ATMs are supposed to be more of a currency exchange business, but I can see how a lot of people would treat them as a money transmitter business.
Bitcoin and similar were created in part as a workaround for these regulations, it appealed to people who wanted control of their own money. People who wanted an end to chargeback fraud, and credit card fraud. I wonder which sort of system has the lowest total fraud costs, including costs of preventative and compliance measures. Do you think we have enough data to make that sort of estimation?
It's ultimately a have your cake or eat it scenario. Regulated bitcoin will look a lot like the system that unregulated bitcoin was meant to be an alternative to.
The story about the family losing their money to a bitcoin scammer just reinforces the perception that bitcoin is tool of and for criminals, scammers, and general low-lifes to use to launder money in the hopes that they won't be caught. People around there can't afford to get scammed as the area is very low income. $25000 was probably that family's life savings and is not far from the median annual income for the county. Bitcoin scammers should focus on scamming high net worth zip codes and leave poor people alone. They might be seen as modern Robin Hoods instead of just a bunch of robber hoods.
No matter how high the "value" of bit-coin or other shit-coins rises they will always carry the permanent stink of fraud and theft, money laundering. Other legitimate forms of payment may share some of that stink but with crypto it is a design feature.
I really whiffed on the angle grinder ID though which irritates me a bit since I first used one in the late 1970's working on a pipeline maintenance crew and I own at least two of them including one old Skil brand that I bought more than 40 years ago. It was late at night when I posted and my old brain couldn't find the right word after all the sun I had absorbed that afternoon.
Stay hydrated out there so the things you post make sense. LOL.
I agree. What the hell was he thinking?
Doesn't this need more reinforcing?
LOL
Every new scam reported just reinforces the perception that bitcoin and other shitcoins are the preferred exchange media of scammers and other criminals everywhere. It turns out that proposing a payment methodology that allows one to operate outside all the usual controls imposed by traditional regulated monetary systems causes those who desire to escape criminal accountability and need to operate in the shadows to adopt it as the default mechanism for managing asset flow into and within their criminal enterprises.
Does that help you?
With the extra context I agree that I did misunderstand your post. Thanks for clarifying that. It's been a long, hot, humid day here and I spent too much time in the sun to be trying to write anything coherent at this time of the day. I think I need to rest and rehydrate some of my brain cells so that they might be more useful to me in the morning. Too many misfires tonight. LOL
First episode is available free on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vUg-cLVhv-4?si=xXL3tZNl36pJj5Lk
Therefore, somehow, the ATM is at fault.
It make no sense, I hope the ATM owners sue and win.
That’s what I say every time I see cash in real life: “hey, that looks just like my $20 bill!”