San Antonio crypto ATM scam spike

San Antonio police say cryptocurrency kiosk scams are hitting older residents so often that the city has started posting warnings at about 90 machines. (kens5.com) The San Antonio Police Department said Bexar County logged more than 1,300 exploitation cases in 2024, the second-highest count in Texas, and the department said the number rose again in 2025. Officers began putting posters beside Bitcoin ATMs on March 27, 2026. (kens5.com) A crypto ATM is a cash-to-crypto kiosk, usually in a gas station or convenience store, that sends digital coins to a wallet after a customer scans a code. The Federal Trade Commission said reported fraud losses through Bitcoin ATMs rose nearly tenfold from 2020 to 2023 and topped $65 million in just the first half of 2024. (ftc.gov) The scam usually starts with a lie, not the machine. Federal Trade Commission data show the biggest Bitcoin ATM fraud categories are government impersonation, business impersonation and tech-support scams, and the median reported loss in the first half of 2024 was $10,000. (ftc.gov) Older adults are carrying much of the damage. The Federal Trade Commission said people 60 and older were more than three times as likely as younger adults to report a loss through a Bitcoin ATM in early 2024, and more than two-thirds of the dollars reported lost through those machines came from older adults. (ftc.gov) San Antonio investigators describe the same playbook. Detective Ricardo Heredia said romance scams, fake computer pop-ups, bogus investment pitches and callers claiming there is an active warrant are all being used to push residents toward crypto payments. (kens5.com) The U.S. Secret Service said the kiosk itself helps isolate victims. Investigative analyst Laura Bravo told KSAT that a crypto ATM removes the bank teller who might question a rushed withdrawal, and once the money reaches the scammer’s digital wallet, recovery gets much harder. (ksat.com) One recent case in the San Antonio area involved an elderly Comal County couple in their 70s who lost $25,000 after callers posing as law enforcement and bond agents kept them on the phone for about eight hours and sent them to several San Antonio Bitcoin machines. Sheriff Javier Salazar said the callers claimed they could help get the couple’s son out of the Bexar County jail. (ksat.com) City Hall is now moving toward a local warning-sign rule. Texas Public Radio reported on April 2 that Assistant Police Chief Jesse Salame told council members 625 police reports tied to bitcoin-related cases had been filed in roughly a year, and the council’s public safety committee was set to review ordinance language on April 21 before sending it to the full council in May. (tpr.org) The proposal has drawn support from council members across districts and from the sheriff, who pointed to Omaha, Nebraska, as a model for warning signs near machines. Salazar said many local victims lose about $23,000 to $25,000 per transaction, and city officials have framed the measure as a public-safety response for seniors and other residents facing fake-arrest and fake-jury-duty threats. (news4sanantonio.com, tpr.org) For now, San Antonio police and federal agents are pushing a simpler message at the machines themselves: no government agency, bank or legitimate business will tell you to fix a problem by feeding cash into a crypto kiosk. (ksat.com, ftc.gov)