Driving back, all Jacquelyn Halushka could think about was how weird it was to be feeding five $100 bills into a bitcoin ATM at a liquor store.
She had never been to the Star Market on a winding, rural part of Joslyn Road in Lake Orion where the Cash2Bitcoin ATM stands by the front window, next to the regular ATM and some Bud Light Seltzer.
“I never bought bitcoin before,” she said.
All Halushka, 27, wanted was a good paying job. And they told her in early August that the bitcoin task was part of the process.
After a long job interview via a messaging app, Halushka was told she was hired. She received a contract and later a $6,548 check was overnighted to her home in Oakland Township by Federal Express for her to buy Apple computer products to work remotely as an administrative assistant for a biopharmaceutical company.
She took a photo of the check to deposit it through her bank’s mobile app. Her bank only made $500 immediately available.
And the scammers convinced her to drive to the bank to get five $100 bills and send that money via a crypto wallet to the equipment vendor. The bitcoin transfer was to prove that she lived in the area before any laptop was sent.
Ultimately, she lost her $500 and realized the job was as phony as can be.
Increasingly, unsuspecting consumers are being directed to a bitcoin ATM somewhere in the city or suburbs and told by convincing con artists how to convert that cash into cryptocurrency. Maybe it starts with a story about needing to pay…
