The Federal Police of Australia said that more than 90 Australians have contacted as part of an offensive against the criminal use of ATMs, including victims of pig carnage and the alleged criminals.
One of the victims was a 77 -year -old widow who was scammed of 433,000 Australian dollars ($ 281,947) in an online dating, the Australian financial intelligence agency, Austrac, said Wednesday.
Australian public broadcaster ABC reported that the widow did not know that the Belgian man with whom she had been dating online for two years was a fraud until the police appeared at her door.
“Half -day work” to send scammer cash
The victim said she was encouraged by the scammer, whom she met in a appointment application, to invest in Bitcoin (BTC) showing her false documents claiming that she had earned $ 13,000 Australian dollars ($ 8,464) in a week.
For its first transaction, according to the reports, the scammer spoke it through the process, which involved withdrawing money from a regular automatic cashier and then feeding it through an automatic Bitcoin ATM. He sent all his life savings in just 18 months.
The victim told ABC that he was carrying around $ 20,000 Australians ($ 13,023) in cash at one time, and added that transfers often took “half -day work”, and became “quite expert in using the Bitcoin automatic cashier.”
“The worst part was to have to tell my daughter that I had really given my life savings, that I had been winning for 40 years, and it took him for 18 months.”
“The working group identified another woman in her 70 years who was scammed after seeing what she thought it was a legitimate announcement about a commercial company that offers a considerable investment return. He lost more than $ 200,000,” said Austrac Brendan Thomas CEO.
Police accuse one, issues a formal caution to others
During the repression, the Australian police attacked the main users of automatic ATMs that were identified as a high risk of being used for illegal activity or victimization of the scam.
Police contacted 21 people in particular who were suspected of victims of scams related to the ATM or alleged that they were involved in illicit activities related to machines.
“We suspected that a large volume of cryptographic transactions of ATMs were probably illicit, but disturbingly our partners of application of the law discovered that almost all transactions that we referred to involved victims instead of criminals,” said Thomas.
One was accused of property washing crimes, while another four received formal precautions for suspicions that they were using cryptography to buy drugs or acted as mules of money for criminals.
However, some mule suspects were victims of scams that invadently attended criminals or transferred funds to recover their stolen money. The AFP said some did not want to admit that the cybercriminals had cheated them.
The last repression follows Austrac, implementing new operational rules and transaction limits for cryptographic ATM operators on June 3 to combat scams. Last December, the agency also marked Crypto as a priority for 2025.
False promises for crypto
The AFP commander, Graeme Marshall, said in a statement that the victims of scams are being manipulated to feed thousands of dollars in ATMs through false promises of love, employment, investment or rapid earnings.
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“If fast profits are guaranteed, if there is a deadline for high pressure or sense of urgency, and if you have never met the person before, the contact immediately ceases and report them,” he said.
“We need to convey the message: if someone, a company or a government agency ask you to pay with cryptocurrency, do not send money.”
The online cybercrime reporting system from Australia, Reportcyber, received 150 unique reports of scams involving automatic cryptography ATMs between January 2024 and January 2025, according to AFP, with losses greater than 3.1 million Australian dollars ($ 2 million).
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