Seniors are paying for Pa.’s crypto ATM problem [opinion]

By Chapin Fay

Last fall, a 74-year-old widowed retired teacher from Douglassville, Berks County, lost $16,000 after a caller claiming to be from the Social Security Administration said the teacher’s bank accounts had been compromised. The caller instructed the victim to withdraw almost all the money in her accounts and feed it into a bitcoin ATM, promising a certified check would arrive at the house that night.

The teacher was not trying to invest in cryptocurrency. There was no bad bet on bitcoin and no market crash. The crypto kiosk was simply the point where cash became an irreversible payment to a criminal.

Pennsylvania is seeing enough of these cases that they can no longer be treated as isolated mistakes. According to the FBI, in 2025 there were 518 Pennsylvania complaints involving cryptocurrency kiosks and $14.5 million in adjusted losses. Nationally, the FBI received more than 13,400 kiosk-related complaints involving more than $388 million in losses. More than half of those complaints involved people over 50.

The pattern is strikingly consistent. A scammer pretends to be from Social Security, a bank, Microsoft, law enforcement or some other trusted institution. The victim is told there is an emergency and that money must be moved immediately. Then comes the instruction to take cash to a crypto kiosk and scan a QR code. The victim does not need to understand cryptocurrency. The scammer handles that part.