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Texas Sheriffs Crack Bitcoin ATM with Power Tools to Retrieve $32,000
- cyberge99 1y ago> locate what appeared to be the victims money That’s what I say every time I see cash in real life: “hey, that looks just like my $20 bill!”
- ruined 1y agoasset custody will always be the hard part
- npoc 1y agoNote that the theives only escaped with dollars.
- mrlatinos 1y agoAre they going to rob the Western Union next?
- lokar 1y agoThe last time I checked western union is highly regulated and actively cooperates with law enforcement to deter this kind of crime. And this kind of crime is 99% of the businesses for these ATMs.
- OutOfHere 1y agoWhat kind of crime?? It's very possible the customer loses the keys to their coin, then blames the ATM.
- cwillu 1y agoThe crime that was perpetrated on the family that ATM owner knowingly or unknowingly facilitated. 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.
- BeetleB 1y agoAfter reading the article, I have no idea what the crime/fraud is. This is a terrible submission.
- Brybry 1y agohttps://www.12newsnow.com/article/news/crime/jasper-county-deputies-recover-25k-in-cash-family-paid-into-bitcoin-kiosk-in-scam/502-347e6645-3b92-41fc-bea5-2921a7d7fa29 https://www.12newsnow.com/article/news/crime/jasper-county-d... Looks like scam callers allegedly direct people to use the machines to facilitate transactions that cannot be reversed.
- OutOfHere 1y agoOkay, but the ATM is not complicit in the crime. To blame the ATM would be like blaming the bank for allowing the sale of a car that facilitated a heist.
- cwillu 1y agoThe correct analogy is if a bank is used to facilitate wire fraud, and they absolutely do have to reverse fraudulent payments, even if they're just a middle-man that unknowingly facilitated the fraud, even if they did their due diligence. “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.
- OutOfHere 1y agoBased on your argument, crypto exchanges would similarly be engaging in crime, but in reality they aren't. In the same way, there is no evidence of any crime here except for the robbery performed by Texas.
- cwillu 1y agoI didn't say they were engaging in crime, I said they are facilitating it, and crypto exchanges absolutely are.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cwillu 1y agoThese “ATM”'s exist to facilitate scamming people; the most charitable I'm willing to be towards the provider is that they know they're engaging in providing a very high-risk service and need to be prepared to eat the costs of fraud if they can't reverse transactions, just like any other provider of high-risk financial services.
- bpodgursky 1y ago[flagged]
- ashdksnndck 1y agoHappy to hear about police doing something to help crime victims. Around here you are lucky if they show up at all. 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.
- ajross 1y agoTo be clear: Bitcoin ATMs know damn well what they're doing. These devices at best performatively disguised money laundering tools. They exist by and for fraud. Virtually no legitimate transactions happen at them. 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.
- behringer 1y agoWhat do you put in a bitcoin atm? Cash right? So you could say the only reason to have cash around is if you're committing crimes. Otherwise you can just use you bank card.
- birn559 1y agoThat's not at all what parent comment said or implied. When A is only used for X and B is needed for A, then it does not follow that B is only used for X.
- dzhiurgis 1y agoSounds like cops should just arrest anyone who uses one then?
- amomchilov 1y agoI would be more than happy to see gift cards disappear. Limited strings-attached IOU that’s worse in every way than the cash paid for them.
- doodlebugging 1y agoI guess the author of that article has never used an orbital grinder since they identified it as a circular saw. The author and the editor both whiffed on that. 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.
- rfrey 1y agoWhat is an orbital grinder? I've been metalworking for 20 years and never encountered one.
- doodlebugging 1y agoGot me. It's an angle grinder in the photo. There are orbital grinders though that isn't one pictured. To me they look a lot like orbital sanders though since they use sanding pads or disks. Let me have some of whatever that author and editor were smoking when they signed off on that text.
- rfrey 1y agoDidn't mean to "get you", I'm always excited to learn about a new tool.
- doodlebugging 1y agoThanks. I'm also a tool person. Woodworking, metal fab, stone and tile, agricultural (hand or mechanically powered) tools, electrical and plumbing, automotive maintenance, garden and orchard tools, etc. I have a lot of tools and will definitely buy new ones if the functionality and efficiency is better than one I already own two versions of. I resisted the switch from corded to battery tools for a long time but after buying combo sets for my wife and Mom I borrowed theirs often enough that I found I can work within their limitations and break out the corded model if the job requires it. I love to use a well-designed tool. 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.
- RainyDayTmrw 1y agoThere's a legal principle known as "attractive nuisance"[1] that might be relevant here. The idea is that if you create conditions, which are likely to lead to harm, and you _knew or should have known better_ (so you can't claim ignorance), then you're legally liable. This seems similar. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine
- kylebenzle 1y agoBy that logic the US government would be liable for crimes committed using USD. Are you saying the gas station owner has some liability?
- ceejayoz 1y agoThe US has sovereign immunity.
- colechristensen 1y agoOk, list some legitimate uses of bitcoin that actually exist in the wild outside of speculation and doing something once for the novelty of it that would require a bitcoin ATM in a gas station in Texas. There's four stories: speculation, money laundering, black market drugs, and "one time in 2012 I bought a pizza and that money would have bought me a mansion today". >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.
- birn559 1y agoHaving full ownership over your money in digital form has quite a lot of disadvantages, so many disadvantages that it makes it a bad idea to do it in general. However, there are a few advantages under certain circumstances. You can easily wire money-equivalent into a country where banks are closed. It also forces countries to be a bit more cautious with acute money regulations in times of crisis (because Bitcoin is a tool to circumvent those). 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).
- couchdb_ouchdb 1y agoRead the article -- what was the crime? I'm still confused.
- bufferoverflow 1y agoSomeone scammed some people out of BTC that was bought at an ATM. Therefore, somehow, the ATM is at fault. It make no sense, I hope the ATM owners sue and win.
- tehwebguy 1y agoInfinite money glitch in Jasper County.
- BobbyTables2 1y agoFrom the looks of that photo, looks like the gas station owner is getting a new floor too!
- neuroelectron 1y agoBased
- pyrolistical 1y agoWhat prevents police from going after regular bank atms? It’s not like banks are not used for fraud as well. 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
- cyberge99 1y agoThat’s precisely what this was. A local small town police doing a show of force to get some petty cash. If they were serious about it they would have enlisted the FBI and found out who the machine owner is; and/or watch until someone comes to retrieve the cash.
- behringer 1y agoThey had a warrant. Ie, the court told them they can do it.
- cturner 1y agoIn the UK the government has somewhat gone after banks at a that level - money transfers. When someone falls for a scam and transfers money to a scammer, the government often makes the call that the bank is at fault for that. This is the absolute laziest thing the government could do, because it allocates all responsibility to the last line of defence rather than being an intelligent response to the problem. 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.
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- Alice78 1y ago[dead]
- sxldier 1y ago@dang, I think it’s fair to say this is a scam post.