Video shows the moment Liberty police confirmed a man was caught in a crypto ATM scam; store clerk called 911
By Eric Graves
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LIBERTY, Missouri (KMBC) — Liberty, Missouri, police are issuing a scam warning after a store clerk stepped in Thursday when they noticed an older customer getting ready to send a large sum of money through a cryptocurrency ATM while on the phone.
Police said the clerk intervened, then called their department.
Officers spoke to the man and learned he believed he was having computer problems, and he thought he was on the phone with Microsoft support.
Bodycam video provided by Liberty Police shows the man tell authorities, “I was on my computer trying to do something and all of a sudden it locked up, and so, I called what I thought was Microsoft.”
The man told police the person on the other end of the line was directing him to send money to fix the virus through a cryptocurrency ATM.
“It sounds real familiar?” the man asked police.
“Yeah, a little bit, unfortunately,” the detective told the man.
Liberty Police Capt. Nathan Mulch said the man had the cash in hand ready to deposit it in the crypto ATM when the store clerk became concerned the man was being scammed. “The store clerk noticed this gentleman seemed confused,” Mulch said. “He was on the phone, and the clerk started kind of striking up a conversation with him, and she realized pretty quickly that he was being scammed, and she got him to stop talking to the person and then called us real quick.”
Mulch said it’s unclear what made the victim’s computer freeze up, but the man got the scam phone number after searching for it online. Scammers can pay for these phone numbers to pop up as a top result for searches. Then, the criminals just wait for someone to fall into their trap.
“It was the first number that popped up on the search engine, so he thought, ‘Well, that’s good,'” Mulch said. “It’s a reputable search engine, and so he gave them a call and they talked him through it, and he thought that’s what he had to do to fix his machine so he can start using it again.”
Once these scammers have a potential victim in their sights, they’re relentless. At the end of the body camera video, you hear a ringtone from the victim’s phone. Mulch said that was the scammer calling back.
“The scammer was calling him, and one of our officers took the phone and they hung up on the officer once they realized that it wasn’t the gentleman anymore,” Mulch said.
Mulch hopes people passing by or employees who work at places with cryptocurrency ATMs will keep an eye out like the store clerk did in this situation.
“If you see someone on the phone and you can tell they’re probably not investing in crypto, go up to strike up a simple little conversation with them, make sure they’re okay,” Mulch said. “If they seem confused or distraught, give us a call and we’ll come out and we’ll talk to them ourselves.”
Mulch said they see about one of these scams a week with people losing thousands of dollars each time.
“They’ve become an incredible drain on our law enforcement resources,” Mulch said.
In fact, over the weekend, Liberty PD was alerted to another cryptocurrency ATM scam.
Mulch said the victim in this crime thought he was talking over the phone with a deputy. The scammer told him he had missed jury duty and had a warrant out for his arrest. The victim sent the scammer $5,000 through a crypto ATM.
“You’ll never pay a bond through crypto machines or Apple gift cards or iTunes or things like that,” Mulch said. “You’re going to go to a department and you’re going to pay for it there, and we’re not going to call you on the phone if you have a warrant and walk you through how to get there. We’re going to come knock on your door and talk to you in person and take you to the station.”
Every crypto ATM in Clay County now has multiple signs attached to it warning users of potential scams.
However, the signs still aren’t stopping every the scam. The crypto ATM at the Liberty gas station where the most recent victim lost $5,000 had four signs on the machine and more warnings once you started using it.
Once the money is deposited into the machine, it is very hard for law enforcement to recover it.
“The value for a scammer, in this case, is the speed at which they can acquire the currency,” said Nick Gicinto, chief information security officer at William Jewel College. “It’s a race for them to try and acquire that crypto into their wallet, move it further along on the crypto chain to where they can get it, convert it back to fiat currency and into their bank account.”
Gicinto said scams like the one targeting the first victim are very common.
“If the victim has clicked on something, a phishing scam, and that pop-up shows on their screen telling them to call, that’s how they get lured in in some cases,” Gicinto said. “They just Google what they think is Microsoft support or Amazon support or whatever, what have you, and because those search results pop up, they trust the first thing that they see.”
When searching for a site or number online, Gicinto said people should run any URLs through VirusTotal.com.
“Right on that front page of that site, you can paste in the website, run a search and it will tell you whether or not that site is potentially malicious,” Gicinto said. “Whenever you have somebody asking for money, usually if it’s cryptocurrency, that’s a major red flag.”
Crypto ATM scams have become a quickly growing crime as the machines have spread across the metro. KMBC9 has covered multiple instances of attempted and successful scams.
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