Mainstream cryptocurrency companies including Kraken, Gemini, and Cumberland DRW transferred billions of dollars in bitcoin to ATM operators that authorities have repeatedly accused of facilitating scams targeting elderly and vulnerable Americans, ICIJ reported.
The investigative news outlet, working with a half-dozen blockchain analysts who traced transactions on the public bitcoin ledger, found that Kraken has transferred at least $1.1 billion worth of bitcoin to crypto ATM operators in recent years. Gemini provided more than half a billion dollars to Bitcoin Depot between May 2020 and March 2025, and Cumberland DRW supplied large sums to both Bitcoin Depot and CoinFlip, the world’s two largest bitcoin ATM operators, according to the report.
Among its most significant findings, ICIJ reported that Kraken continued sending funds to Athena Bitcoin after Washington D.C.’s attorney general alleged last September that 93 percent of Athena’s transactions involved scams and that the firm “fails to provide effective oversight, creating an unchecked opportunity for illicit international fraud.”
The day after that announcement, a Kraken account sent Athena more than $270,000 in a single transaction, and Kraken accounts transferred approximately $17 million to Athena through March 31, 2026, when the transfers appear to have stopped, according to experts consulted by ICIJ. In a March court filing, Athena Bitcoin identified Kraken as its “primary crypto exchange.”
Bitstamp separately sent at least $7 million to a firm called Crypto Dispensers between 2018 and 2024, a period during which federal prosecutors allege the firm used its ATM network for money laundering, according to the news outlet.
The investigation comes as the ATM industry faces mounting legal and regulatory pressure. Canada has proposed banning the machines, and Tennessee, Minnesota, and Indiana have passed legislation to outlaw them. Bitcoin Depot, until recently the world’s largest operator with nearly 10,000 machines globally, filed for bankruptcy last week citing litigation and government action.
The FBI reported last month that Americans lost $389 million to crypto ATM scams in 2025, with victims disproportionately aged over 60, according to ICIJ.
Jason Ghetian, a former FBI agent specializing in crypto scams, told ICIJ that major bitcoin suppliers should have been wary of their relationships with ATM operators given the machines’ well-documented criminal use. “These exchanges could shut these ATMs down if they don’t provide liquidity for them,” he said.
The human cost of the machines is illustrated in the ICIJ report through the account of Ann Tatem, a 77-year-old Florida resident who lost $10,000, much of her retirement savings, after a scammer posing as a Federal Trade Commission official directed her to deposit cash into a local Bitcoin Depot ATM in April 2025.
Blockchain experts who reviewed the transaction confirmed it passed through the same Bitcoin Depot cryptocurrency address that a Boise, Idaho police detective said appeared consistently across more than a hundred scam investigations. That address had also received sizable transfers from Gemini. Tatem told ICIJ she was forced to cash out her life insurance plan to cover the loss.