It was a sight sketchy enough to draw the concern of a vape shop employee: a single mother in Jefferson County shoveling money into a Bitcoin ATM, her phone pressed to her ear.
The woman—whose name has not been made public because she was a victim of a crime—got a call from someone purporting to work for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, a claim that was seemingly bolstered by the fact that the caller knew that the woman had been exempted from jury duty the previous August. The caller said that the woman had two warrants out for her arrest, both for missing jury duty in August and again earlier that March.
But if she paid her fines, the caller said, the warrants would be deactivated. All she had to do was deposit $1,000 in a Bitcoin ATM at a nearby vape shop…