Jan 14, 2026
A convenience store clerk in Westlake, Ohio, knew something was up when he saw an older woman depositing thousands of dollars into a cryptocurrency ATM.
He suspected she was being scammed and told her as much. It didn’t stop her. The quick-thinking employee then called police to intervene.
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As News 5 Cleveland reports, and as the responding officer’s body-cam footage shows, even as police told her she was being scammed, the woman kept feeding money into the jaws of the ATM.
“Are you normally investing in Bitcoin?” the officer can be heard asking in the footage.
“I can’t talk right now,” she replied.
“Ma’am, if somebody called you to do this, you are being scammed.”
“They’re on the phone, they can hear everything,” she said, convinced the scammers on her smartphone were with Fifth Third Bank’s fraud department.
“Right, they're scamming you,” the officer said. “We deal with this all the time.”
“If I don’t do this now, I’ll lose the money,” the woman says anxiously.
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Sadly, she did lose the $5,500 she fed into the ATM.
But the officer was able to convince the woman to hang up the phone, and stop depositing money into the machine.
“I can’t believe I fell for it though, that’s the thing,” the woman can later be heard saying. “I’m so careful and stuff.”
Unfortunately, as Westlake Police Capt. Jerry Vogel told News 5, you can’t be too careful. A growing number of older Americans are falling victim to such fraud.
“Mostly the elderly are falling victim to these types of scams,” he said.
Here’s a look at the scope of the problem and how to protect yourself and those you love.
Scams targeting older adults
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Americans 60 and older lost $2.4 billion to fraud in 2024 — that’s 26% more than 2023. The agency says that the year-over-year increase in scams was driven by losses over $100,000 (2) (3).
The FTC notes that as many frauds are not reported (in some cases due to people’s embarrassment at being scammed), the real cost could be anywhere from $10 billion to more than $81 billion.
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ATM crypto scams, like the one that targeted the woman from Ohio, often begin the way many scams do: with con artists impersonating a business or government agency.
According to the FTC, the fraudsters often say that you have a legal problem, that you owe money or that your accounts have been frozen or compromised (4).
They will tell you that to solve the problem, or protect your money you must buy cryptocurrency. That’s a red flag, as crypto payments are generally irreversible.
Then they may send you a digital wallet to deposit the money in, to “keep it safe,” or direct you to a crypto ATM and instruct you on how to deposit the money, convert it to crypto, and give you a QR code that sends the money to their digital wallet.
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Protect yourself and your loved ones
Beware of calls or text that suggest there’s a problem with your bank account — designed to make you anxious and less likely to make rational decisions.
Scammers use pressure tactics and fear mongering to get you to do what they want, something you likely wouldn’t do if you were calm and able to step back and assess the situation.
Fraudsters tell victims they need to send money to deal with the “problem”, and tend to ask for that money in the form of cryptocurrency, gift cards or gold. As the FTC notes:
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“No legitimate business is going to demand you send cryptocurrency in advance — not to buy something, and not to protect your money. That’s always a scam.”
Another tactic scammers will use is to tell you not to tell anyone else what is happening.
Meanwhile, they may keep you on the line to make sure they do their bidding. It can be very intimidating, as the incident in Westlake, Ohio shows.
Armed with these red flags, you may not only be able to protect yourself but those you love, as Vogel advises.
“Please talk to your relatives,” he said.
News 5 reported that the Westlake Police Department is hopeful they’ll retrieve some of the victim’s money.
Article sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our editorial ethics and guidelines.
News 5 Cleveland (1); CNBC (2); Federal Trade Commission (3, 4); FBI (5)
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Rebecca Payne has more than a decade of experience editing and producing both local and national daily newspapers. She's worked on the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, Metro, Canada's National Observer, the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press.
