- Three men and one company have been found guilty of earning from customers being scammed through their machines.
- All BOA Bitcoin ATMs have been seized since the investigation began.
- Prosecutors believe that the ATMs were ready-made for scammers due to the lack of consumer and Anti-Money Laundering protections.
A US Prosecutor recently indicted three executives and one crypto firm for refusing to license all BTC machines, allowing their customers to be scammed and profiting from each transaction on their Bitcoin (BTC) ATMs.
On March 2, a grand jury indictment was returned to S&P Solutions, which operates as “Bitcoin of America,” charging the company, Reza Meraban, Sonny Meraban, and William Suriano on multiple charges, including violation of license requirements for owning and operating crypto kiosks in Ohio state, conspiracy, money laundering and many more.
Since the Cuyahoga County grand jury returned the indictment against the trio last week, the founder, manager, and company attorney were arrested along with search warrants carried out on their residences.
Due to the rigorous investigation carried out against the accused by the US Secret Service Cyber Fraud and Money Laundering Taskforce. The result proved that the three men and the crypto business were guilty of operating crypto kiosks without registering for a money transmission license. And they illegally represented their money transmission features to the state regulators to avoid detection.
However, Andrew Rogalski, the economic crime supervisor at the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, believed that robocalls, law enforcement impersonators, and romance scammers seized this opportunity to exploit the absence of the Anti-Money Laundering protections in the company’s system and transferred digital assets out of the customer’s wallets.
Rogalski mentioned that these scammers’ target audience is elderly or vulnerable users. Hence, the Bitcoin (BTC) ATMs run by S&P Solutions’ Bitcoin of America (BOA) were the perfect tools for scammers to execute their evil plans.
“These ATMs are ready-made for scammers,” Rogalski said in an interview.
He further added that on the premise of Bitcoin of America (BOA) being loose with its consumer and Anti-Money Laundering protections, the scammers would be able to direct their victims to BOA ATMs, use the money withdrawn from their 401Ks or savings accounts and deposit it into the BTC machine, before sending it to an unknown wallet which was given to the victims on the phone, thinking it is theirs.
Since the indictment of the accused party, 52 BOA ATMs have been seized in Northeast Ohio, 41 ATMs were seized in Cuyahoga County, and 11 ATMs were seized in Lorain County.
The result from the investigation also revealed that S&P Solutions and the trio profited from the multiple transactions made by the scammers. An estimated $3.5 million was earned from the cash deposits made in each of these illegal kiosks.
According to the report, the accused siphoned 20% of the funds deposited in each transaction at the BTC ATMs. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley added that one of the major problems was the trio’s negligence in licensing the BTC machines in Ohio state.
“These individuals took 20% of every transaction that occurred in the machine,” he said.
Conclusion
The refusal to register and license the BTC machines led to the arrest and seizure of all BOA ATMs around Ohio state when the investigation results revealed that the accused profited from the scams on their machines. The three men have been charged with multiple counts of criminal acts as this will serve as a lesson to all illegally operating BTC ATMs in America.
