A woman who deposited money into a Bitcoin ATM — after a scammer claiming to be from her bank told her to do so — got a happy ending, according to White Settlement police.
The 84-year-old woman was scammed out of $40,000. She withdrew the money from her bank’s ATM and went to the Chevron at 2025 Cherry Lane in White Settlement to deposit it into a Bitcoin ATM.
There, a customer in the store saw her and thought something was wrong. She called 911, according to a police news release.
“I was getting money out of the ATM here and I saw an elderly lady putting thousands of dollars into the cryptocurrency machine,” the customer told 911 in a recording released to the public. “They have her facetime to make sure she puts the money in the machine. I just don’t think she’s aware of what she’s doing. … It just seems so suspicious.”
The 911 caller said she tried to stop the elderly woman from putting money in the machine, but the woman said she was “correcting a mistake someone else made,” she says in the 911 recording . She couldn’t get the woman to stop putting money in the machine and saw that she was getting tired from standing, so she grabbed a chair for her and called the police.
The scam
Police said the woman received a call from someone claiming to be a Chase Bank employee demanding she withdraw $40,000 from her account and take it to the Bitcoin machine at the supermarket.
The scammers managed to spoof their number, making it appear as if the call actually came from the bank. According to police, they even arranged a ride for the woman, taking her to the bank and then to the convenience store. They told her she would be arrested if she did not follow their instructions.
As police would later tell the scammers and the potential victim, Chase Bank would not tell any customer to take money out of their account and deposit it into any form of cryptocurrency.
Officers found the woman sitting on the chair and continuing to put money into the machine. The caller told police that the woman had already put more than $23,000 into the machine.
Talk to the scammers
The officer grabbed the woman’s phone to talk to the person on the other end of the line, according to a body camera released by police. The person on the other end said he was with the Chase Bank security team and the White Settlement officer, Sgt. James Stewart identified himself as police and told them to call his dispatch if they were really at the bank.
“Okay, please let me speak to the customer,” the person on the other end said in a thick accent.
Stewart told them they would not talk to the woman again, even though the person on the other end of the line kept asking to talk to her.
“If you need to speak to her, call my dispatch first,” Stewart told them.
The person on the other end of the line kept demanding that Stewart let them speak to the woman, whom they called “the customer,” and that he turn on the FaceTime camera and put it on the screen so they could see how it was going. money was deposited.
“You have nothing to do with this,” the person on the other end of the line told Stewart.
“Yes, I do,” Stewart replied. “This is fraud and theft.”
They continued to make demands, including telling the woman to answer the police sergeant’s phone, and refusing to call the White Settlement Police Department dispatch. Ultimately, they try to get the woman to click “I’m done” on the screen, which will complete the $23,900 deposit and send the money to the scammers.
Then Stewart got upset.
“She’s not clicking on anything,” he shouted at the scammers. “Do you really want to fight this battle with me?”
They tried to tell him it was “not your problem,” but Stewart was having none of it. He told them they were committing a crime and that made it his problem. They kept trying to talk to the woman and calling her by the wrong name, which upset Stewart even more.
“You still didn’t get her name right, idiot,” he shouted at the scammers.
The happy ending
The woman put the money in, but didn’t click anything to end the deposit. This allowed the police to help her.
White Settlement Police Chief Christopher Cook said on social media that police were able to get a check for the $23,900 she deposited and that Stewart was even allowed to be the one to present the check to the woman.
Stewart said he became angry at the scammers because while he was trying to help the woman, he kept thinking about his mother.
“I wish we could find this man and put him behind bars for a really long time because he’s probably doing this to other people,” Stewart said in the news release.
Police said the woman who intervened will be recognized for her actions at the next White Settlement council meeting.
Police worked with the Bitcoin Law Enforcement Liaison and the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office to recover the money for the woman.
