37,342 crypto kiosks, and a third of one state's operators unregistered
FinCEN's notice of 4 August 2025 records 10,956 IC3 complaints involving crypto kiosks in 2024 with about $246.7 million lost — complaints up 99% in a year. It also records the machines growing from 4,128 to 37,342 in six years, a third of one state's operators failing to register, and scammers steering victims to specific kiosks to avoid the compliant ones.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Ongoing
- Reported loss
- $246.7 million
- Victims
- 10,956
- Schemes
- Bitcoin ATM and crypto kiosk scams, Government impersonation
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-06
The facts, as recorded
- FinCEN issued Notice FIN-2025-NTC1 on 4 August 2025, to financial institutions.
- In 2024 the FBI's IC3 received more than 10,956 complaints reporting the use of CVC kiosks, with reported victim losses of approximately $246.7 million.
- That is a 99% increase in the number of complaints and a 31% increase in reported losses from 2023.
- Coin ATM Radar reports US kiosks rising from 4,128 on 1 January 2019 to 37,342 on 1 January 2025; FinCEN notes the data are self-reported and not comprehensive.
- Kiosks are generally sited in businesses with heavy foot traffic and long opening hours — convenience stores, petrol stations, cafés and supermarkets.
- A 2021 New Jersey Commission of Investigation report found more than a third of the companies operating kiosks in that state had not registered with FinCEN as money services businesses.
- According to law enforcement, scammers have directed victims to specific kiosks, in some cases across state lines, likely to avoid operators with strong anti-money-laundering controls.
- California's Digital Financial Assets Law prohibits kiosk operators from accepting or dispensing more than $1,000 a day from or to a customer.
- On 26 February 2025 the Iowa Attorney General sued two kiosk operators over failures that allegedly let Iowans transfer more than $20 million to scammers.
- FinCEN also records kiosks being used to launder suspected drug proceeds, with the DEA reporting that transnational criminal organisations including Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación are increasingly adopting virtual currency.
Why this case matters
The FTC counts what victims lost. FinCEN’s notice explains why the machines were there to lose it at.
Three findings, and each is about the industry rather than the scam.
One: the machines multiplied nine times over in six years
4,128 US kiosks on 1 January 2019. 37,342 on 1 January 2025.
FinCEN attributes that to Coin ATM Radar and immediately adds that the data are self-reported by operators and not comprehensive — some large operators, and probably many small ones, do not report at all. We repeat the caveat because FinCEN did.
They sit in convenience stores, petrol stations, cafés and supermarkets: heavy foot traffic, long hours, easy access. The same qualities that make a machine convenient for a customer make it convenient for somebody being talked through a transaction by telephone.
Two: a large share of operators were not registered
A 2021 New Jersey investigation found more than a third of the companies operating kiosks in that state had not registered with FinCEN as money services businesses.
Registration is not paperwork. It is what brings an operator inside the identification, monitoring and reporting rules that let anyone see the transaction afterwards. An unregistered operator is a cash-to-crypto conversion with no record attached.
Three: scammers pick the kiosk
This is the finding that changes how to read the whole category.
Scammers have directed victims to specific CVC kiosks, in some cases across state lines, likely to avoid CVC kiosk operators with strong AML/CFT controls.
Victims are not sent to the nearest machine. They are sent to a chosen one — and the choice is plausibly made on which operator will ask the fewest questions. When somebody on the phone insists on a particular petrol station forty minutes away, that instruction is doing work.
The scale, from the other agency
IC3’s 2024 figures, as cited by FinCEN: 10,956 complaints and approximately $246.7 million lost through kiosks — complaints up 99% on 2023, losses up 31%.
Complaints doubling while losses rose by under a third means the average loss fell: more people, less each. That is what a payment method looks like as it moves from specialist to routine.
And it is not only fraud
FinCEN records kiosks being used to launder suspected drug proceeds, with the DEA reporting that transnational criminal organisations — Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación among them — are increasingly adopting virtual currency for rapid international transfers.
The same machine, in the same shop, serves both. Which is why the regulatory response is aimed at operators rather than at the people using them.
Sources
- FinCEN Notice on the Use of Convertible Virtual Currency Kiosks for Scam Payments and Other Illicit Activity (FIN-2025-NTC1). Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, US Department of the Treasury. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The 4 August 2025 notice, the IC3 complaint and loss figures and year-on-year changes, the kiosk counts and their self-reported caveat, the siting of machines, the New Jersey non-registration finding, the steering of victims to specific kiosks, the California daily limit, the Iowa lawsuits and the drug-proceeds laundering observation.
- Bitcoin ATMs: A payment portal for scammers. US Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Protection Data Spotlight. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The FTC analysis the notice cites, and the scam types behind kiosk losses.