The Kiosk Only Takes the Cash

The case

A voice on the phone sends one person, with cash, to a crypto ATM at a gas station.

That is how one federal case in Massachusetts begins, in the prosecutors’ telling. It is also, the FBI says, a pattern: in 2025, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 13,400 complaints reporting the use of cryptocurrency kiosks, with losses over $388 million. The FBI’s count doesn’t name any operator, and it says those losses cannot be solely attributed to the kiosks.

This article follows two paper trails that meet at one kiosk. The first is a forfeiture case about one wallet. The second is a bankruptcy about a whole network of kiosks. It is a case study of the method, not a guide to the machines.

How to read it. Every sentence says whose words it uses:

• Prosecutors say — the U.S. Attorney’s press release on the forfeiture case. A summary by one side.
• The government says — its forfeiture complaint. Allegations.
• The company says / told the court — the kiosk operator’s own court filings and announcement.
• The order says — the bankruptcy court.

No victim, buyer or executive is named here. The person in the Massachusetts case has no name, age or city in this article.

How does a phone call end at a crypto ATM?

With a word: protection. In the case the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts filed in July 2026, prosecutors say a home computer froze and a pop-up sent the person to a customer support number. The person called. The voice on the line said it was customer service. Prosecutors say it was a scammer.

The money in the bank account, the scammer said, had been compromised. To protect it, the money had to move. To the government. For safekeeping.

Then the step. “At the direction of the scammers,” prosecutors say, the person withdrew money from the bank and deposited it into a crypto ATM at a gas station. From there, they say, the money went to the people running the scam.

That’s the order that matters. The call came first. The kiosk came after.

We covered the pop-up end of this path in our piece on fake tech support pop-ups, and the word “compromised” in our piece on fake bank fraud alerts. In our last case, the cash went into a box. Here, it goes into a kiosk. The same kind of call. A different door.

What does “safekeeping” mean in this scam?

It’s the word that turns a theft into a favor. The person isn’t paying anyone. They’re protecting their own money, or so the caller says, by moving it somewhere safe.

The FBI’s own warning about these machines puts the criminals first: “Criminals may direct victims to send funds via cryptocurrency kiosks.” The money goes into the kiosk. The direction comes from the phone.

And the story around it can change. The agency the caller claims to be can change. The reason for the hurry can change. The destination stays the same.

Where did the money go?

Some of it, prosecutors say, left a trail. Investigators traced funds to a crypto wallet and seized them in March 2026. In July, the government asked a federal court to forfeit about $47,000 in crypto tied to that wallet, which it says is traceable to wire fraud.

The complaint is filed against the crypto itself. The crypto is the defendant, “in rem.” No person is the defendant in it, and its details are allegations.

How big is the problem, by the FBI’s count?

Big, and growing. The FBI’s public service announcement of May 2026 says the 13,400-plus complaints in 2025 were a 23% increase over 2024, and the losses rose 58%. More than half of those complaints, it says, involved people over 50.

The FBI’s 2025 annual report breaks the kiosk complaints down by age. People 60 and older reported about $257 million in losses, the largest share of any age group, by far. That table counts only complaints that gave an age, so we don’t turn the 257 into a fraction of the 388.

Two cautions come with these numbers, and the FBI gives both. They are complaints: what people reported. And a single complaint can include other kinds of payments, which is why the FBI says the losses can’t be pinned on the kiosks alone.

The FBI sorts these complaints by state and by age. Not by company.

Who operated the biggest kiosk network, and what did it tell a court?

One kiosk company left a different kind of record, in a bankruptcy court. That operator was Bitcoin Depot, which says it had the largest market share in North America. At the end of 2025, it told the court, it operated about 9,700 owned and leased kiosks, and the kiosks had been the core of its business.

In May 2026, in a declaration signed under penalty of perjury, the company told a bankruptcy court in Texas that it faced lawsuits and investigations from 11 state agencies. In its own words, many of them “generally allege that certain of the Company’s operating platforms are being used by third parties to perpetuate fraud …”

Read that sentence the way it is written. The company is the one saying it. The states are the ones alleging it. And the fraud, in that sentence, belongs to third parties. Lawsuits and investigations are allegations, and their outcomes aren’t in the records we read. The plan the court later confirmed repeats the same description.

Remember the gas station in the Massachusetts case? Prosecutors say the kiosk there carried that operator’s brand. The company isn’t a party to that case, and the details in it are allegations. Two cases, two courts: a forfeiture in Massachusetts about one wallet, and a bankruptcy in Texas about a whole network.

What had the company changed before the bankruptcy?

How the kiosks worked. In October 2025, the company told the court, it began requiring ID before a purchase of any amount, what it called Know Your Customer verification. For a machine that takes cash, the person at the screen now had to say who they were.

After that, its revenue fell. In the first quarter of 2026 it was down about half from a year earlier, a drop the company attributed to “a combination of regulatory impacts and enhanced compliance controls.” It gave both causes, together.

The company also pointed to the states: stricter compliance rules, new transaction limits and, in some places, restrictions or bans, along with more litigation and more regulatory enforcement. Those are the company’s reasons, from its May 2026 announcement.

In May 2026 the company filed for bankruptcy, its own filing, and took its kiosk network offline. As of that day, its declaration said, the kiosks had been taken offline and were not operating.

Through all of it, one part of this story stayed the same: the call. None of those dates changed what a caller does.

What happened to the kiosks in bankruptcy court?

They became inventory. In July 2026, the court approved sales of the company’s assets, including kiosks, to at least five buyers. Five sale orders were signed on the same day, July 24. The court approved the sales free and clear of the company’s old debts, apart from the liabilities a buyer agreed to take on.

The orders get literal. They even cover what happens if a purchased kiosk arrives without its internet router. And they kept two things out of the sales: the company’s money-transmitter licenses, and “any information about the identity of persons which was obtained through transactions” at its kiosks.

The orders show the sales. They don’t say what any buyer did next.

In August, the court confirmed the company’s own plan to liquidate. The plan took effect on August 24, and a liquidation trust now winds down what’s left.

What does the order say about states and customers?

Most of a bankruptcy order is about money and paperwork. Two paragraphs of the confirmation order are about people.

The states. Claims by government units under consumer-protection and money-transmitter laws, the order says, “are not discharged, released, precluded, or enjoined by confirmation of the Plan.” Any money from them is treated as a claim and paid under the plan. The order also preserves the government’s police and regulatory powers. Powers stay. Money waits in line, with the other claims.

The customers. A plan like this can include releases, which end certain claims against some people and companies. The order says people who used the company’s kiosks as consumers are “deemed to have opted out of the Non-Debtor Releases with respect to any claims arising out of such use”, whether or not they filed a claim. In plain words: those releases, for people and companies other than the bankrupt company, don’t cover those customers’ claims over that use.

That is what the order says. It is not advice, and how much any claim will be paid isn’t in the records we read.

How to spot it

These are the signals the records describe. Each comes with a question to ask yourself, not the caller.

A caller who says your account is compromised. Counter-test: ask yourself who told you. In the Massachusetts case, prosecutors say, the “customer service” voice was the scammer.

Safekeeping, by moving money. Counter-test: ask yourself why safe money has to leave the bank. No real agency calls and tells you to move your money to keep it safe.

A support number from a pop-up. Counter-test: ask yourself where the number came from. If a pop-up hands you a support number, close it.

A kiosk at the end of the call. Counter-test: ask yourself who chose the step. In the FBI’s words: “No legitimate law enforcement or government official will call to demand payment via a cryptocurrency kiosk.”

What to do if it is happening to someone you love

Stay with them. If someone you love mentions a kiosk and a government caller in the same breath, stay with them, and call their bank together. A caller can sound like a bank, or an agency. A caller can’t be in the room.

Call the bank yourself. At the number on the card, not a number the caller gives you.

Report it. If it already happened, the FBI says to file a report with your local police and a complaint at ic3.gov, and to keep any receipts or transaction records.

The kiosk, again

Back to that gas station. The kiosk only took the cash. The voice on the phone did the rest.

That’s the part you can use. Not anyone’s name. The pattern.

Everything here comes from the public record: the FBI’s May 2026 public service announcement and its 2025 annual report; the bankruptcy case No. 26-90528 in the Southern District of Texas (the company’s first-day declaration, the sale orders, the order confirming the plan and the notice of its effective date); the company’s May 2026 announcement; and the civil forfeiture case No. 3:26-cv-30123 in the District of Massachusetts, with the U.S. Attorney’s release on it. What prosecutors and the government say is allegation; what the company says is its own account; what the orders say is the court’s.