A Massachusetts city has banned cryptocurrency ATMs after residents reported losing $397,000 to scams involving the machines since 2023.
The Framingham City Council voted unanimously to approve the ban at its recent November meeting, reports MetroWest Daily News.
The ban is meant to protect senior citizens, non-English speakers and lower-income residents from financial fraud.
District 3 Councilor Mary Kate Feeney first introduced the proposal in October.
Says Feeney,
“This is really something to protect our seniors. There are so many scams, and I don’t need to tell you, I think we have all heard the horrible stories. But this is something that we can do to limit scams in our city.”
Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan, who fully supports the ban, says that in the past three years her office has received 10 cryptocurrency ATM scam cases in Framingham that totaled $397,000 in losses.
She also says that recovery of the stolen funds is difficult.
“What’s incredibly important about this is that there’s no way to get access to [the stolen funds], even in those cases where we are able to successfully prosecute who may have been the scammer. We can’t access the wallet that will be holding the money. Often that wallet is actually outside of the United States. There’s really no good reason for these machines to be scattered around the city.”
Police will notify businesses that host the machines that they must disconnect them within a set timeframe.
Framingham joins 22 other Massachusetts communities that have passed similar prohibitions.
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