Grand Prairie, Texas — Joseph Buentello, 80, was cruising through retirement when he received a call erroneously claiming his son was in jail.

“I was scared, I hit the panic button and I let my panic take control of my good judgment,” Buentello, of Grand Prairie, Texas, told CBS News. 

The caller told Buentello that if he wanted to get his son out, he needed to rush to his local grocery store and send $5,000 through a bitcoin ATM. 

Buentello said he never even thought about calling his son first.

“They said there is nothing we can do about it,” said Buentello the ATM operator told him after he was scammed. “That money has already been distributed. They said it was distributed the minute you got through putting your money in there.”

That is why, Buentello learned, the cryptocurrency scammers wanted him to use that machine. Often found inside convenience stores, Bitcoin ATMs resemble regular ATMs and provide a legitimate and straightforward method to convert cash into cryptocurrency.

According to data from the Federal Trade Commission, between 2020 to 2023, consumer losses in bitcoin ATM scams skyrocketed nearly tenfold, from $12 million annually in 2020 to $114 million annually in 2023. During that timeframe, consumers over the age of 60 were more than three times more likely than younger adults to lose money to bitcoin scams, the FTC found.

And getting the money back has been tough.

When McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara first joined law enforcement back in 1970, he said the biggest thieves in the Texas county were bank robbers.

“Take a gun, go rob a bank, get the money, and we’d go after ’em,” McNamara said. “But this is a totally different deal now.”

A couple of years ago, after a caller scammed an 83-year-old woman in Waco, Texas, into depositing $15,000 into a bitcoin ATM, McNamara’s deputies pulled the cash right out of the machine and returned it to her.

The bitcoin ATM operator then sued the county, claiming the seizure was unlawful, but the lawsuit was eventually dismissed and the woman was allowed to keep the money.

However, the lawsuit was dismissed only after the county admitted that the funds were seized “in error.”

McNamara doesn’t regret how the situation was handled.

“I don’t regret it at all,” McNamara said. “We got the lady’s money back. It should have gone back to her.”

Bitcoin ATM operators told CBS News that they take extensive measures to protect users from fraud, including displaying up to six screens alerting customers to potential scams.

In recent years, a handful of states, including California, Vermont and Minnesota passed laws regulating Bitcoin ATMs. However, most of the country, including Texas, has no regulations.  

“I feel like such a fool,” Buentello said.

Had there been any sort of refund policy in place when he made his transaction, Buentello believes could have saved his money and avoided the scam.

According to the FTC, scammers will often offer an urgent reason for the victim to withdraw cash from their bank account and deposit it in a bitcoin ATM. They will provide a QR code that victims can scan, which deposits the money directly into the scammers’ crypto account.

Some tips from the FTC to avoid being scammed include never clinking on unknown links or responding directly to unexpected calls or unknown text messages. Scammers will be trying to rush you, so you should slow down and consult with someone you trust. And never withdraw cash in response to an unexpected call or message.