The crime that was perpetrated on the family that ATM owner knowingly or unknowingly facilitated.
Your inability to reverse transactions implies you're taking on a very high risk and should be vetting your customers very carefully. “But defi!” is not an excuse when you know that these ATM's are used for this purpose.
Okay, but the ATM is not complicit in the crime. To blame the ATM would be like blaming the bank for allowing the sale of a car that facilitated a heist.
The correct analogy is if a bank is used to facilitate wire fraud, and they absolutely do have to reverse fraudulent payments, even if they're just a middle-man that unknowingly facilitated the fraud, even if they did their due diligence.
“But crypto!” is irrelevant; don't engage in providing high-risk services without looking into what the risks actually are and who is legally responsible for absorbing them.
Gift cards are much more commonly used for scams, because your grandma knows how to buy gift cards. The difference is that gift cards are very profitable to big chain stores, whereas cryptocurrency presents a threat to the status quo. Police in the USA also get to keep any unaccounted for cash or crypto they find in a search, so there's an added incentive to target the ATM.
Does western union reverse transactions? To my knowledge, they do not. Yes they co-operate with police, but so do licensed bitcoin ATM operators.
Also "defi" is just ponzi schemes. The only real use for crypto has been using it as money. People buy recreational drugs, yes. They also buy medicine, data privacy services, or donate to political causes that their government makes it risky to associate with. Depending on the coin it has the valued properties of being permissionless (can't be debanked), stable (USD-tether compared to local tin-pot currency), anonymous (monero). You may be lucky enough to have access to lots of stable currency which you can keep in a reliable bank account in a country that lets you buy everything you need, but don't make the mistake of believing that's the case for everybody.
It makes a lot of sense to seek ways to stop the scams. Distrust is expensive in a society. Targeting the money changers is certainly an idea, we'll see if it works. I predict nothing will change until the people who are running the fraud operations actually go to prison.
“What is this case about?
For years, many people who lost money to scams sent their payment through a Western Union wire transfer. Scammers contacted people and promised prizes, loans, jobs, discounted products or other financial rewards in exchange for money upfront. They also pretended to be family members in need of cash, or law enforcement officers demanding payment. The scammers told people to send money through Western Union. No one received the cash, prizes or services they were promised.
Because of joint investigations by the FTC, the Justice Department, and the U. S. Postal Inspection Service, Western Union agreed to pay $586 million and admitted to aiding and abetting wire fraud. The Justice Department is now using that money to provide refunds to people who were tricked into using Western Union to pay scammers.”
“In its agreement with the Justice Department, Western Union admits to criminal violations including willfully failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and aiding and abetting wire fraud.”
Bitcoin ATMs are supposed to be more of a currency exchange business, but I can see how a lot of people would treat them as a money transmitter business.
Bitcoin and similar were created in part as a workaround for these regulations, it appealed to people who wanted control of their own money. People who wanted an end to chargeback fraud, and credit card fraud. I wonder which sort of system has the lowest total fraud costs, including costs of preventative and compliance measures. Do you think we have enough data to make that sort of estimation?
It's ultimately a have your cake or eat it scenario. Regulated bitcoin will look a lot like the system that unregulated bitcoin was meant to be an alternative to.
Based on your argument, crypto exchanges would similarly be engaging in crime, but in reality they aren't. In the same way, there is no evidence of any crime here except for the robbery performed by Texas.
And this kind of crime is 99% of the businesses for these ATMs.