On 08SEP2025, the District of Columbia’s Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Athena, a “Bitcoin ATM machine” provider with 4100+ BTMs installed. Athena charges as much as a 26% fee when someone deposits cash to buy cryptocurrency. More importantly, the lawsuit claims that 93% of all deposits into Athena “BTMs” in the DC area were made by scam victims.
The main argument made by this lawsuit is that Athena knows that it is facilitating fraud, it is making substantial profit from that fraud (up to 26% per transaction), and that it refuses to refund money to the victims, despite 1/4th of the money still being in Athena’s coffers after a transaction!
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| https://oag.dc.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/Athena%20Complaint.pdf |
The DC AG goes further, with a very significant accusation:
“Athena also has allowed elderly consumers to deposit very large amounts of cash over short time periods into wallets that Athena knew had already been used by other scam victims. Athena’s ineffective oversight procedures have created an unchecked pipeline for illicit international fraud transactions.”
The DC AG’s lawsuit claims that the average age of the victims who were enticed to depositing fraud funds into an Athena BTM in their district was 71 and that half of them deposited at least $8000!
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