PROVIDENCE – Timmons Roberts‘ letter to state lawmakers began with this painful admission: “On April 16th, 2024, I was scammed. Pretty badly.”
“I’m here telling you about it because I wish someone had [warned] me,” said Roberts, 64, a professor of environmental studies at Brown University. “The CoinStar machines in supermarkets made it possible.”
The worst part, Robbins wrote, wasn’t the $2,200 he lost – “that can be lived with” – but rather the three things he hasn’t been able to let go of since.
He can’t get the man, who was on the phone doing a “brilliant” imitation of a federal marshal, out of his head, Roberts said. His trust in humanity is badly shaken. And the fact that he fell for the scam is “humiliating.”
“Everyone thinks they are smart enough to not let this happen to them, that it’s only ‘old clueless women’ or something who get scammed,” Roberts wrote. “Talking to the FBI was helpful in convincing me otherwise, and apparently there’s some research on the fact that highly educated people with good jobs are just as likely to fall victim as anyone,” but they are just too ashamed to admit it.
Roberts shared his story of how he, a professor at an Ivy League university, was sucked into this scam during the first of two State House hearings on a bill to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, which AARP Rhode Island has described as a top priority this year.
The bitcoin logo is seen on a Coinstar cryptocurrency ATM at a grocery store in Washington, D.C.
Crypto scams are happening all over Rhode Island
Westerly Police Chief Paul Gingerella told lawmakers that in Westerly alone, many residents have lost significant sums of money, even their entire life savings, because of cryptocurrency scams and cryptocurrency ATMs.
“We have investigated cases where individuals deposited and lost $40,000 in just two days and multiple instances of $15,000 or more losses in a single day,” Gingerella said. “When we attempt to work with these machine owners to recover these funds, we are met with indifference and little to no cooperation.”
Looking beyond Westerly, AARP Associate State Director Matthew Netto told the House Committee on House Innovation, Internet, & Technology that in 2023, the FBI found that Americans reported losing more than $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency fraud, and $2 million of those losses were from Rhode Islanders.
The scams, Netto said, involve making payments using cryptocurrency ATMs, or “crypto kiosks” and “virtual currency kiosks” that can be found in supermarkets, shopping malls, gas stations and convenience stores.
He estimated there are at least 120 in operation in Rhode Island today.
What does the bill do?
The legislation, as originally proposed in the House by Rep. Julie Casimiro and in the Senate by Sen. Victoria Gu, would have required:
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Licensing cryptocurrency kiosk operators in the state
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A $1,000 daily transaction limit per vendor
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A $5 or a 3% fee cap on transactions (whichever is higher)
It also would have required cryptocurrency operators to refund transactions and ATM fees for fraudulent transactions.
Two of the larger players in the crypto-kiosk industry, CoinFlip and Bitcoin Depot pushed back, resulting in a compromise announced just ahead of Tuesday’s Senate hearing on the bill.
“CoinFlip would support a ‘reasonable transaction limit’ for new users who may not be familiar withthe kiosks,” and limit equal to the federal gift card limit of $10,000 for seasoned users, the company’s general counsel, Larry Lipka, had suggested at an earlier hearing.
At that time, he called the proposed fee caps a “de-facto ban on the industry,” because it would not allow the full recovery of operational costs. And he likened the required refund of “scam victims” authorized transactions to requiring Target to refund the purchase of a gift card if the customer later gave their gift card to a bad actor.”
On Tuesday, AARP Rhode Island – and an industry lobbyist – announced the proposed compromise that Casimiro, the House sponsor, negotiated with industry representatives. Key features:
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A virtual currency kiosk operator shall not accept transactions involving more than $2,000 from a new customer and $5,000 from an existing customer in a single day. (This brings Rhode Island in line with Connecticut law.)
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Removal of the fee cap provisions
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Physical receipts, starting in November 2025
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A refund policy that would include full refunds for new customers of all transactions “if they were fraudulently induced,” and a refund of transaction fees for existing customers if fraud occurred.
Breaking down the scam: Here’s what happened
Roberts said he received a call while driving on the Mass Pike from a Washington, D.C., number. The basic premise was that he had failed to appear for federal jury duty in Providence and was in contempt of court.
Roberts said he never got a summons, and the caller, posing as a lieutenant, said he checked and it looked like the signature on the paperwork was forged. He gave Roberts a callback number and the answering machine said it was the federal court in Providence and sounded “completely legit.”
The scammer picked up the extension, told Roberts he was in contempt of court and he could either appear at the federal courthouse and possibly be detained for eight to 10 hours, or he could pay a fee at a CoinStar machine in a “Federal Payment Kiosk” that, the scammer said, the government had been using since COVID.
The scammer told Roberts to put the cash in the machine and transfer the payment. Once the forgery was cleared, Roberts would be refunded the money.
“Looking back, of course this seems absurd,” Roberts wrote.
Roberts took out a first round of cash and deposited it into a CoinStar machine at a Stop & Shop. He didn’t realize it was a scam until he had to get more cash and the teller told him it was a fraud, hung up Roberts’ phone and told him not to answer it.
When Roberts called the real court number listed on Google, the woman in the jury duty division told him several people had been scammed that week.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Cryptocurrency kiosks are a favorite of scammers, and may be regulated in RI