Karen and Robert Lacey have filed a class action lawsuit against Bitcoin Depot, saying the company’s Bitcoin ATM network helped a scammer drain their entire retirement savings over five days in August. The complaint says the couple deposited $76,000 between Aug. 9 and Aug. 13, 2025, after fraudsters posing as Norton customer service representatives and FBI agents convinced them they were tied to child pornography and illegal gambling.
The lawsuit says the money moved through Bitcoin Depot ATMs without meaningful intervention, even though the company collected fees along the way. It also alleges the operator’s cut could reach 50% on some transactions, making the loss far steeper than the amount the Laceys handed over in cash.
That is why the case is landing now. Karen Lacey was retired when the scam hit. She is back in the workforce and now works rotating hospital shifts, a detail that shows how quickly the loss changed the couple’s life and why the lawsuit is framed as more than a dispute over one bad transaction. The case, Lacey, et al. v. Bitcoin Depot Inc., et al., was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho and seeks injunctive relief, compensatory and punitive damages, restitution of fees, attorney’s fees and a jury trial.
The complaint says the fraudsters also made wireless networks labeled FBI appear on the Laceys’ phones, and that the names stayed visible for months after the deposits. After the couple’s son filed a federal crime complaint, Bitcoin Depot issued two $1,000 refund checks, which the lawsuit says did not even cover the fees the company had collected. The filing also points to Bitcoin Depot’s own SEC disclosures, which warn that its services may be exploited for fraud and that its controls may not be enough, while saying the ATMs still processed the Laceys’ deposits one after another.
The case arrives against a larger backdrop of Bitcoin ATM fraud that federal data cited in the complaint says rose nearly tenfold from 2020 to 2023, with a median victim loss of $10,000. The plaintiffs are asking a judge to hold Bitcoin Depot responsible for the way its machines handled the transactions, and for whether warning stickers alone can count as protection when the cash is already gone.
