I say, things are getting dashed eccentric Down Under! The Australian Federal Police, that bastion of law and order, have lately been busy deterring the criminal element in the world of cryptocurrency ATMs—a contraption quite as baffling as Jeeves’ explanations of income tax, if you ask me. In league with the outfit known as AUSTRAC (which sounds like a breakfast cereal but is, I’m assured, frightfully serious), they’ve heroically pestered over 90 people, with the general aim of halting villainy—or at least stopping the nation’s grannies from unwittingly bankrolling it.
Among the hapless was a 77-year-old widow, bless her, who found herself out of a whopping AUD 433,000 ($281,947, give or take a platypus), all thanks to some digital Don Juan from Not-Really-Belgium. This rotter, with the smoothness of a used car salesman on commission, convinced her that Bitcoin was the bees’ knees and that fortune was but a button-press away. He even flourished some utterly fictitious paperwork showing he’d made a tidy AUD 13,000 ($8,464) in a mere week. Anyone with less cynicism than Bertie Wooster accepting a new chef might have bought it too.
Our plucky widow, armed only with optimism and, apparently, a rather trusting nature, trotted off to empty her savings—forty years’ worth of hard graft, all gone in 18 months. Not to be outdone, another lady in her seventh decade fell for a crypto ad, losing 200,000 smacker-roos (roughly $130,000, or approximately the GDP of a small island) to another confidence trickster promising avarice made easy.
The official boffins—otherwise known as the AFP—have fingered 21 unlucky souls: some were likely victims, others may have been indulging their entrepreneurial spirit on the wrong side of the law. Charges have been laid (what excitement!) for something called property laundering, which sounds terribly posh, and warnings handed out for being what’s known in the biz as “money mules.” Picture the scene: an elderly Australian, more used to knitting than narco-trafficking, suddenly cast as a crypto-era Dr. Moriarty.
Naturally, those parted from their nest eggs hope to get their hands back on the boodle. Meanwhile, AUSTRAC—perhaps after a particularly alarming breakfast—has introduced new rules for Bitcoin ATMs. The focus: stopping crypto-related curmudgeonry in its tracks for 2025 and beyond, in accordance with the ancient Australian tradition of shutting the stable door long after the kangaroo has bolted.
Statistics, for those who like their tea with a side of gloom: Australia’s cybercrime system has documented 150 incidents of crypto ATM chicanery between January 2024 and January 2025, totalling more than AUD 3.1 million ($2 million). On June 3rd, AUSTRAC, that tireless watchdog, declared even sterner rules for these bewitched money machines—presumably to ensure one needs a degree in quantum physics before daring to insert a single coin. 🕵️♂️🤦♀️💸
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2025-06-26 15:38