Key Insights:
- Tasmania has been beneath strain from rising crypto ATM scams currently.
- The Tasmanian police lately found that every one prime 15 crypto ATM customers have been victims of scams up to now.
- Australia is taking measures in opposition to the misuse of crypto ATMs, alongside different areas like New Zealand and Spokane in Washington DC.
Tasmania has been dealing with a rash of crypto-related scams as of late.
Lately, regulation enforcement discovered that the highest 15 customers of crypto ATMs within the Australian state have all been victims of fraud. These scams, which frequently contain romance or faux funding schemes, have value Tasmanians a mixed $2.5 million AUD.
Furthermore, $592,000 of this quantity has been funneled immediately by way of crypto ATMs. Right here’s the way it all unfolds.
How the Rip-off Labored
In response to stories from the Tasmanian Police Cyber Investigations Unit, the victims, have been tricked by way of social engineering ways.
The scammers usually made first contact by way of telephone calls, emails or social media earlier than shifting conversations to encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram.
Australians are dropping hundreds of thousands of {dollars} yearly to crypto ATM scams
Australia broadcasts new guidelines to safeguard crypto customers from scams@Mohammed11Saleh stories pic.twitter.com/gkFyMaiTsu
— WION (@WIONews) June 3, 2025
As soon as they’d gained the sufferer’s belief, the fraudsters would introduce both a romantic narrative or an funding alternative that promised excessive returns. To “safe” the funding or show their love, victims have been instructed to deposit money into the ATMs. That is the place the funds can be transformed to crypto and despatched to the scammer’s pockets.
By the point many victims realized they’d been duped, the cash was lengthy gone.
Tasmania’s Crypto ATM Explosion
Again in 2021, Tasmania had only one crypto ATM. Quick ahead to this 12 months, and that quantity has ballooned to at the very least 24 based on knowledge from Coin ATM Radar.
This charge of development has created extra factors of vulnerability for scammers to take advantage of. Crypto ATMs work equally to common money machines, however permit customers to purchase or promote crypto like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Their ease of use, anonymity and lack of oversight make them particularly interesting to fraudsters. In lots of instances, victims have been pressured towards these ATMs after mainstream monetary establishments like banks flagged the suspicious transactions.
Australia Cracks Down on Crypto ATM Abuse
The rip-off revelation in Tasmania comes amid a a lot bigger nationwide crackdown.
For instance in June 2025, AUSTRAC, Australia’s monetary intelligence company, launched new compliance guidelines and transaction limits for the ATM operators. These guidelines now cap crypto ATM deposits at $5,000 AUD per transaction, in an effort to discourage giant rip-off transfers.
AUSTRAC had already listed crypto misuse as a precedence concern for this 12 months. This was earlier than the stories and the occasions in Tasmania now present clearly why. Australia is at present the third-largest marketplace for these ATMs globally, behind solely america and Canada.
The nation now boasts over 1,890 ATMs, up from simply 67 in August of 2022.
Total, Tasmania isn’t alone in tackling the darker aspect of crypto ATMs. For instance, In New Zealand, officers lately introduced a extra aggressive ban on crypto ATMs, together with restrictions on worldwide money transfers.
In the identical vein, town of Spokane, Washington (USA) additionally handed a whole ban on the ATMs on June 16, ordering the removing of all current machines and blocking the set up of latest ones.