The attorney general of the Columbia district in the United States, Brian L. Schwalb, sued on Monday, September 8 to the ATHENA BITCOIN ATM operator for alleged deceptive practices and financial exploitation of older adults. This accusing her of systematically ignoring scams that affected vulnerable residents and hiding disproportionate commissions that reached 26% per transaction.
According to information from Coin ATM Radar, the company that operates approximately 3,500 ATMs in the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay, Haiti and other countries, Face two positions to violate the Law on Consumer Protection Procedures (Scar).
The company was involved in the development of the Wallet goat in El Salvador. And in 2021 it was one of the first companies to install ATMs in the country, deploying 200 equipment after the Bitcoin Law, although it initially announced plans to install up to 1,500.
The demand of 30 pages filed before the Superior Court of the Columbia district reveals that, during the first five months of operation – from May 2024 until September 2024 – in the US capital, «93% of the funds deposited at the ATMers of Athena came from proven fraud.»
Actually, scams through Athena ATMs are described as a process through which scammers manipulate victims, mainly older people, so that They deposit effective in automatic bitcoin ATMs under false pretextshow to protect your finances or collaborate with research.
Then, the scammers guide the victims by phone, making sure that they ignore the warnings of the ATMs, and direct the funds to BTC wallets that they control.
The demand indicates that «Athena facilitates these scams by not implementing effective prevention measures, hiding commissions of up to 26%, and denying reimbursements, resulting in significant losses.»
This case is part of a growing national trend that records, only in 2023, losses of 189 million dollars in scams linked to ATMs of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies throughout the country, not exclusively from Athena Bitcoin, according to data cited by the FBI in the legal documentation.
The heart of the accusation lies in the unnatured commissions structure. While traditional exchanges charge up to 3% for purchases of Bitcoin, Athena allegedly concealed charges that averaged 26% within their «exchange rate», without breakdown in receipts or on their website, as detailed by the document.
In a documented case, A victim bought Bitcoin at an artificial price of $ 80,300 when the real value was $ 60,000allowing a scammer to receive $ 7,500 while Athena obtained $ 2,500 in commissions, adds in the complaint.
«Consumers had no clear idea of the exorbitant margin they paid,» argues the demand.
On the other hand, the document describes that, Another victim lost almost $ 100,000 in 19 fraudulent transactions made in a short period. He adds that these transactions occurred through the ATMats of Athena Bitcoin in Washington DC, and the victim was manipulated by scammers that led her to deposit large sums of cash in BTC wallet controlled by them.
The lawsuit underlines that Athena did not implement effective measures to prevent these scams and retained eevated commissions of these transactions, exacerbating the damage to the victims.
Prosecutor Schwalb stressed that warnings at the ATMs, which include technical phrases on personal wallets, are not very effective for major victims, «who are often manipulated by scammers.»
The case could sit a critical precedent for the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency automatic ATM industry, which last year rebounded the way to its historical maximum with more than 38,000 teams worldwide, as cryptootics reported at the time.
Athena Bitcoin, which in addition to automatic ATMs, offers OTC (Over the Counter) services through Athena Crypto Exchange (ACE) for private customers and point of sale services (Athena Pay), has not responded to a request for comments sent by cryptootics. There is also no pronouncement on this demand from the company through its official channels.