With AML there a limits as to how much you can take in and out at a time.
In *theory* they have a better idea of who is converting fiat to BTC.
Would it have helped in these situations, perhaps in some small way.

The issue is now, there were 10s of thousands of dollars moved to scammers criminals and no way to track the victims.

More importantly since they were operating unlicensed machines, they don't know what they don't know.
BTC purchases from straw buyers for other criminal things.
People avoiding the tax people
and so on.

The issue also is there are licensed ATMs that people could have used so there were also taking money out of the pockets of people who did things the proper way.

-Dave

The prosecutor is right and also the person involved in this kind of mess is wrong and a fool, using a bitcoin ATM is secured enough because they operate under a licensed corperate organization but using a kiosk for bitcoin transaction is a very wrong decision because the people or persons you're dealing with are not secured or regulated, p2p is meant to be performed on the atmosphere where the escrow provider are trusted, anything you're not sure of shouldn't be assumed, a fact must be established, only a newbie can fall their hands in this.

This is crazy. Running more than 50 unlicensed Bitcoin ATM kiosks in the United States should have earned them a lot of money to become licensed and registered, but they stayed unlicensed, avoiding taxation and perhaps trying to cover up their travesties. The article mentioned that they have been operative since 2018, which have been a long time since they started. I wonder what they were thinking—that they might not be noticed. The prosecutor is right about their conviction. If this was a registered company, perhaps the scammy acts faced by users may have been detected.



I'm just wondering: if this Bitcoin ATM took a 20% transfer fee from the innocent guy that got scammed for $11,250 and that earned this firm $9,000 all at once, how about people that got scammed for more than $11,000 and spent the 20% fee? This really confirms that this company would have really obtained a license if they wanted to.

Only thing I really see to be fishy in this case is the unlicensed nature of these kiosks. Mind you, a lot of ATMs and banks have been involved with scams in the past as well, but they got away with it scot-free because they have operational licenses that allow them to at least be absolved from the crime. In any case, I don't think this is a massive blow to the cryptocurrency community if that's a problem you're looking for. Plus, I don't really see the appeal of these kiosks, and I never saw anyone ever use a bitcoin ATM in the past. It's also a bit convoluting to think that a government sector was sure about pressing fraud charges against an ATM company without prior evidence being present. If they're able to present proof that these ATMs are indeed being used to defraud people who are none the wiser when it comes to crypto, which I should say, is a whole level of stupidity, then I might just believe the company should accept the fraud charges.