Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway has hauled CoinFlip into court this week, accusing the crypto ATM operator of knowingly helping scammers and cashing in on victims’ losses. The lawsuit targets a network of roughly 140 kiosks across the state and asks a judge to shut down CoinFlip’s Missouri operations while the state seeks payback for consumers. Prosecutors highlight three victims in the filing, including an 80-year-old St. Charles County woman who says she was stripped of $35,000.
The lawsuit and the relief at stake
The state filed its petition in Jasper County, asking the court to declare CoinFlip’s practices unlawful under Missouri consumer-protection law and to block the company from running any kiosks in the state. According to the complaint, prosecutors are seeking restitution along with civil penalties of $1,000 per violation, calculated to total as much as $1,826,000, and other equitable relief. The filing argues those remedies are needed to stop ongoing transfers that prosecutors say function as a pipeline for fraud.
Victims tell similar stories
Victims in Missouri describe near-carbon-copy phone scams. Callers, often reading from what sounds like a script, allegedly rush targets off the line and straight to the nearest kiosk, then walk them step by step through feeding in cash. In an interview with First Alert 4, St. Charles County resident Georgianna Merrell said a scammer convinced her to deposit $35,000 into a CoinFlip machine, only for her to later learn the money had been “sent to wallets in Nigeria.” Other victims told reporters they received partial refunds of fees, but the bulk of their money had already moved on and could not be recovered.
Alleged fee structure and footprint
The petition alleges CoinFlip operated more than 140 kiosks in Missouri, listing 143 machines as of Sept. 26, 2025, and used an opaque fee setup that can exceed roughly 20 to 22 percent of a deposit. Prosecutors say the kiosks show a small “network fee” at checkout, while a separate transaction fee is buried in lengthy terms, so that a $100 cash deposit might net a customer only about $75 in cryptocurrency once all the charges are stripped out. The state also says CoinFlip had access to detailed analytics and remote camera feeds yet failed to roll out effective fraud-prevention tools that could have blocked obviously suspicious transfers.
CoinFlip's response
CoinFlip is firing back, calling the lawsuit “meritless” and telling First Alert 4 that it actually pushed for Missouri’s 2025 kiosk consumer-protection law and supports licensing and compliance standards. The company says it plans to fight the case in court and argues that going after a licensed operator will not stop the scammers who are actually running the cons. How that argument stacks up against the attorney general’s version of events will determine whether a judge ultimately grants the shutdown and restitution the state is asking for.
Why regulators are focused on kiosks
Federal data show crypto ATMs have quickly become a favorite tool for fraudsters. The FTC reported that fraud losses involving Bitcoin ATMs surged between 2020 and 2023 and reached tens of millions of dollars in 2024. In Missouri, state officials say complaints and law-enforcement data suggest older residents are bearing the brunt of the damage, and that reported losses to the Attorney General’s office alone could top $7 million statewide, according to local reporting. Together, the national and Missouri numbers form the spine of prosecutors’ claim that these kiosks are functioning as “getaway cars” for modern scams.
Legal angle: the MMPA
The attorney general is bringing the case under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, which lets the office seek injunctions, restitution, and civil penalties for deceptive practices. Legal summaries of the MMPA note that the law broadly bans “deception, fraud, false pretense” in trade and gives courts the power to order exactly the kind of remedies Missouri is pursuing in this case. If the court finds CoinFlip liable, the company could be ordered to refund victims, clean up its disclosures, or stop doing business in the state altogether.
How to report a crypto ATM scam
People who think they have been hit by a crypto ATM scam are urged to contact local law enforcement and file a report with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at IC3. State officials say they are collecting victim complaints and expect those reports to help build the record for restitution and tougher enforcement, according to local coverage. As the case against CoinFlip moves forward, Hanaway’s office says it will keep talking directly to residents about common scam tactics so fewer Missourians end up at these machines in the first place.
