- Scammers posing as law enforcement officials are using personal information obtained from data breaches to trick victims into depositing money into Bitcoin ATMs, resulting in nearly impossible recovery of funds.
Mia Bashir knew about scams. She’d seen the stories, heard the warnings. None of that mattered when a caller posing as a Wake County deputy rattled off her full name, maiden name, and entire Social Security number — details almost certainly harvested from a data breach.
The voice said she’d missed jury duty. A warrant was out. Fake Department of Justice documents hit her phone mid-conversation, listing statutes she’d supposedly violated. The caller offered to “help” her post bond, according to ABC11 reporting, and never hung up — not once — while steering every move she made.
That constant connection is the trick. Like a grifter running a long con, the scammer’s job was to fill every second with urgency so Bashir never had a quiet moment to question what was happening. Under instruction, she withdrew thousands from her bank, drove to a gas station in Apex, and deposited the cash into what the caller described as a “federal machine.” It was a Bitcoin ATM. The money converted to crypto instantly and vanished into a scammer’s wallet…