Australian federal police said they contacted more than 90 Australians as part of a repression of the criminal use of automatic crypto tickets, including victims of pig butcher and alleged delinquents.
One of the victims was a 77 -year -old widow who was scammed on 433,000 Australian dollars ($ 281,947) in an online meeting scam, Australia’s financial intelligence said on Wednesday.
Australian public broadcaster ABC reported that the widow was unaware that the Belgian man that she had been going on online for two years was fraud until the police showed up at her door.
“Work’s work” to send money to the crook
The victim said that she had been encouraged by the crook, whom she had met on a meeting application, to invest in Bitcoin (BTC) by showing her false documents saying that he had won $ 13,000 Australian dollars ($ 8,464) in a week.
For his first transaction, the crook would have spoken to him throughout the process, which involved withdrawing money from an automatic counter, then feeding it via Bitcoin ATM. She sent her entire savings in just 18 months.
The victim told the ABC that he tribes around 20,000 Australian dollars ($ 13,023) in cash at a given time, adding that transfers often took “half a day of work”, and he became “quite expert in the use of Bitcoin ATM”.
“The worst was to have to tell my daughter that I really had my savings, which had taken me 40 years to win, and it took him 18 months to obtain it.”
“The working group identified another woman in the 1970s who was sold after seeing what she thought was a legitimate advertisement on a negotiation company offering a significant return on investment. She lost more than $ 200,000,” said Brendan Thomas, CEO of Austrac.
The police invoice one, emit official prudence to other
During the repression, the Australian police targeted the best users of the automatic cryptographic ticket distributors who were identified as at high risk of being used for illegal activity or victimization of the scam.
Police have contacted 21 people in particular who were suspected of victims of scams linked to ATM cryptography or who would have been involved in illicit activities related to machines.
“We suspected that a large volume of ATM Crypto transactions was probably illicit, but our disturbing police partners have found that almost all the transactions we have referred involved victims rather than criminals,” said Thomas.
One was accused of money laundering offenses, while four others received official warnings on suspicions they used from crypto to buy drugs or acted as money for criminals.
However, some alleged mules were victims of scams who involuntarily helped criminals or knowingly transfer funds to recover their stolen money. AFP said a few did not want to admit that cybercriminals had duped them.
The last repression follows Austrac, deploying new operational rules and transaction limits for Atm Crypto operators on June 3 to fight against scams. Last December, the agency also reported the crypto priority for 2025.
False promises for crypto
AFP commander, Graeme Marshall, said in a statement that scam victims are handled in the supply of thousands of dollars in crypto automatic counters thanks to false promises of love, employment, investment or rapid benefits.
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“If you are guaranteed rapid benefits, if there is a high pressure deadline or a feeling of emergency, and if you have never encountered the person before, stop immediately and report them,” he said.
“We have to get the message across: if someone, a company or a government agency asks you to pay by using the cryptocurrency, do not send money.”
The Australian online cybercrime report system, Reportcyber, received 150 unique scam reports involving automatic cryptographic ticket distributors between January 2024 and January 2025, according to AFP, with losses exceeding 3.1 million Australian dollars ($ 2 million).
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