Wood County Sheriff’s Department pushes for cryptocurrency kiosk protections

WOOD COUNTY, Wis. (WSAW) – The Wood County Sheriff’s Department is hoping a bill that would protect victims from scams involving cryptocurrency kiosks will soon be signed into law. It passed with bipartisan support on Tuesday.

Scammers have used kiosks to take thousands of dollars from victims in north central Wisconsin. Scammers convince people to first deposit cash. It’s then turned into bitcoin and sent to scammers.

The Wood County Sheriff’s Department first received complaints about scams involving cryptocurrency kiosks three years ago. Since then, they’ve been investigating reports and testifying for change.

Sheriff Shawn Becker has been sounding the alarm.

“We did push, we did communicate, communicate with our law enforcement agencies, communicate with other legislators, anybody that would be willing to listen,” Becker said.

Legislation passes with bipartisan support

Lawmakers have been working to impose regulations on these kiosks. One element would require operators to reimburse victims.

“I’m hoping that we can go retroactively to the investigations that we’ve been handling and where we’ve kept the money at the sheriff’s department, and we can give it right back to that victim. And that’s going to be a great day, quite honestly,” Becker said.

The department has thousands of dollars in evidence they seized that they’ll be able to return to victims if the bill is signed into law.

The legislation also includes daily $1,000 transaction limits.

“That limitation is really going to be effective, because somebody can’t walk in there with $20,000 or even more and put it into the machine,” Becker said.

It also requires operators to add warning labels to kiosks. It also requires kiosks to be more than five feet away from ATMs.

“It took many, many people to be involved in this and understand it’s a process to create legislation and we’re there. And we’re really happy with the end result,” Becker said.

Becker also gave an update about a lawsuit from last year. A crypto vendor sued the department for seizing cash from their bitcoin machines. They’ve now settled. Becker said he didn’t agree with that, but it showed they needed to continue pushing for change.

AARP Wisconsin supporting legislation

Raj Shukla is the Wisconsin state director for AARP. He said this legislation does a lot to stop scammers in their tracks and protect victims, especially since it puts $1,000 daily transaction limits on kiosks.

“That means that people won’t be losing a lifetime’s worth of life savings in just a day. It provides for receipts for every transaction so that law enforcement can track transactions and find scammers faster,” Shukla said.

Shukla said the consumer protections that exist on ATMs don’t exist on cryptocurrency machines. He said this legislation levels the playing field.

Shukla is hoping the bill is signed into law this week. He said scams involving cryptocurrency are rampant right now.

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