Gas station hero stops crypto kiosk scams, again and again

It always comes down to individual morality

Once in a while, a human being does the right thing and you wonder why it took so long.

I’ve long held the opinion that the only real use case for cryptocurrency is fraud; we can debate that. Crypto kiosks, on the other hand, leave little room for discussion. These ATM-like machines you’ll find in gas stations and convenience stores just make it easy for criminals to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from victims. They have little other purpose. No sane person would use the machines for a normal cash-crypto conversion; the fees are too high.

I talk to scam victims every week and for the past 18 months or so, nearly every story ends with a tragic scene of a victim shoving $100 bills into one of the Crypto ATMs. Generally, these are crypto novices who spend half an hour or more nervously shoving their life savings into these machines, bills getting spat back at them like a misbehaving vending machine, as onlookers avert their eyes. Victims often believe they are minutes from being arrested on an outstanding warrant, or about to have all their cash stolen in some kind of bank conspiracy. It doesn’t matter why -- they are being manipulated by crime gangs using AI tools, behavioral science, and teams of experienced worker bees.

But all that was no match for Eric Stewart, a gas station employee in small-town Tennessee who is a genuine digital age hero in my book. Not long ago, Eric noticed a woman named Ellen walk frantically into his store. She was chattering on her cell phone and looking around nervously for the crypto kiosk. She also had $6,200 in her hands. A few minutes earlier, Ellen had received a phone call from the county sheriff saying she’d missed a court hearing about her PPP loan, and there was a warrant out for her arrest. The caller knew exactly how much Ellen had borrowed through that pandemic-era program and demanded she repay half of it immediately -- via bitcoin.

Eric didn’t avert his eyes, the way so many people do in the stories I hear. Instead, he stepped right in front of Ellen and confronted her. Here’s the scene, as told in our podcast, The Perfect Scam.

Eric Stewart: And that’s when I said, my very first question is, “Do you know who you’re talking to?” She said somebody said there’s a warrant out for her. A warrant? Yeah, and I said, “No ma’am,” I said, “No.” I said, “You can go to the police station. There’s no way that the money going to a Bitcoin machine is going, that’s not how you pay this. That’s not, that’s not how that gets paid. There’s, that’s not the form of payment that you would pay for something like this.”

Bob: And then Eric tries to be even more direct.

Eric Stewart: I was like, “Please, just hang up the phone. Just hang up the phone.” I said, “If it is a warrant, you can go to the police and ask them if there’s a warrant and everything.”

Bob: Ellen remembers looking up from her phone to listen to Eric.

Ellen: And then the manager came over and said, “Stop, that’s a scam. Don’t put any cash in that machine.”

Bob: Wow! That’s very dramatic.

Ellen: Yeah. The way I remember it, he, he just came over and said, “If they’re asking you to put cash in that machine, it’s a scam. Don’t do it.”

Bob: Wow.

Bob: So Ellen looks down at her money, back down at her phone, and tries to tell Karen what’s going on.

Ellen: On the phone I said, “The manager here is telling me this is a scam.” And she wasn’t even there anymore ‘cause she could hear him talking to me.

So, Eric saved Ellen that day. And you can probably already guess, this wasn’t the first time. Eric often notices agitated customers on their phone headed for the kiosk in his store, and stops them. He does so in the gentlest way possible -- after all, these people are scared and carrying a lot of money. In the episode, you’ll enjoy his homespun wisdom about how he does it. And you’ll enjoy his great accent. But more than anything, I hope you’ll enjoy his sense of decency and duty to his community. He’s so decent, he actually feels regret for the one woman he wasn’t able to stop in time because the store was busy.

While we wait for cities and states to regulate or outright ban these machines (many are!), and we wait for tech companies to do the right thing, we’re going to need a whole bunch more Erics in this world.

Below is a partial transcript of the episode, but I hope you’ll listen to the whole thing.

----------------------PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT-----------------------

[00:14:34] Bob: It was a small moment in time, but it was genuinely a life-changer for Ellen.

[00:14:40] Bob: I wonder if you remember, maybe like her facial expression when suddenly it dawned on her that, that yes, this was a scam? Have, do you remember anything like that?

[00:14:47] Eric Stewart: Yeah. Her face did change. And as I’m sitting there, exactly I could see, you’re exactly right, her face did change when it was coming to her an understanding of things that me and her were speaking to, making her understand that this is a scam and bringing obvious steps into this. So yeah, her face went from like confused and oh my goodness, and like, you could see a little bit of shock and the realization in her face. But yeah, I could see the relief on her face too right there at the end when she was leaving. Oh, more or less like I probably don’t have a warrant on me. I can’t believe I almost got scammed, but also that I don’t have a warrant out for me, I’m not going to lose... I had to lose all this money, spend all this money on what she thought she needed to do. The relief on her face when she left was, was a huge difference from when I first had approached her.

[00:15:49] Bob: Not only does Eric save Ellen from having a lot of money stolen; he cares for Ellen’s fragile emotional state too.

[00:15:57] Ellen: I just felt so foolish.

[00:15:59] Bob: Oh.

[00:15:59] Ellen: Really, and Eric was like, “It just happened to two other people here this morning.” He told me that.

[00:16:05] Bob: Wow!

[00:16:05] Ellen: He just said, “It happens to everybody.” He said or, “It could happen to anyone. You don’t feel bad.” ‘Cause I was saying, I feel so foolish. (chuckles) I can’t believe I almost put $6000 in this machine, and so he was just really nice, a nice guy.

[00:16:21] Bob: Five minutes out of his day or whatnot, but it really was a life-changing thing for you, right?

[00:16:26] Ellen: Absolutely, absolutely. I love Eric. I don’t hesitate at all to go into Kwik Mart anymore; you know what I mean?

[00:16:33] Bob: Eric, rightly so, enjoys feeling like he’s done something for the community.

[00:16:38] Bob: That must feel great for you.

[00:16:40] Eric Stewart: Yeah, it does, it does. It really does, and I remember, I don’t think I said anything to my wife about it, till the end of the day I was, oh yeah, by the way... But to me it’s like, it’s just, ‘cause the way I think about it, what if that was your family member? What if that was your grandma, your aunt, you know your mother, you know, your neighbor, you know your best friend? Why would you not, why would you not help another person in need, ‘cause that is someone’s grandma, that is someone’s mom, aunt, sister, relative, neighbor; they’re all those things. And I wouldn’t, why would you not want to help that person, when it takes a couple minutes, that’s it.

[00:17:20] Bob: But he didn’t even realize the depth of the trouble he saved Ellen from until I told him. Ellen would have had to make monthly payments with interest to pay back that $6200 she borrowed from her HELOC.

[00:17:34] Bob: So she didn’t have that money. She had to take out a loan to have that money.

00:17:38] Eric Stewart: Oh wow.

[00:17:39] Bob: She would have had years of $200 a month payments or whatever in addition to everything else. You really, it’s a big deal what you did for her.

[00:17:47] Eric Stewart: Wow, that’s amazing. That makes me feel even better now. Hah. That’s awesome.

[00:18:52] Bob: Yeah.

[00:18:53] Eric Stewart: Wow, that I was able to help that, prevent that. Wow.

00:18:57] Bob: Yeah, she had a HELOC, and so she borrowed money out of the HELOC in order to get the $6000. That would have been a years’ long problem for her that you stopped.

[00:18:04] Eric Stewart: Yeah, and stress especially if she’s on a fixed income. I know she was a little bit older, I don’t know how old she is and or anything like that. I know a lot of people are just living off of one check a month trying to survive, and then that stress added more. Wow, that would have been a lot more stress, yeah, wow. I’m going, God had put me there on purpose, for that, at that moment. Absolutely.

[00:18:29] Bob: Maybe you can tell from Eric’s matter of fact tone of voice, this wasn’t his first crypto ATM rodeo.

[00:18:37] Bob: This isn’t the only time you’ve stopped other people from doing this too, right?

[00:18:41] Eric Stewart: That’s correct, yeah.

[00:18:42] Bob: How many do you think?

[00:18:43] Eric Stewart: Easily two more, easily two more after that. And the last one, he was, I assume a spouse, and I’d had done the same thing. And I said, “Sir, just...” He was fighting me on it. He really was. And he moved the phone away from his cheek, and I was seeing on there, I said, “Sir, your phone for caller ID says, ‘SPAM RISK.’ It says on your phone just ‘SPAM RISK.’” I said, “Please just hang up.” And he fought me too. He had walked out that door. I told his wife, I said to whoever she was, I was like, “Hey...” She said, “I’ve been trying.” I said, “Please, just hang up that phone. Just get that phone from him and hang it up ‘cause I promise they’re not going to call back.” I think he; he didn’t do it because there’s not that many of those ATMs or machines around, those Bitcoin machines. There’s not a lot of them.

[00:19:33] Bob: How did Eric learn to be so attuned to potential crypto ATM scams? Well, he listened.

[00:19:41] Eric Stewart: How I learned about this was, I had a elderly customer, unfortunately it’s been a lot of elderly people, same scenario was happening, and a customer had said, told us, he goes, “Hey, whoever that is over there, she been over there talking to, that’s a scam, ‘cause I could hear the conversation on the phone going back and forth. That’s a scam.” And so that’s how I got the information on figuring out how it’s a scam just learning from that right there. And I just used my intelligence and common sense and put things together, hey, y’all, okay, this is a scam.

[00:20:15] Bob: But the first time you saw this, somebody actually tipped you off that they had heard the conversation and it was a scam.

[00:20:19] Eric Stewart: Yes, sir. She actually fought me.

[00:20:22] Bob: Fought you. Wow.

[00:20:24] Eric Stewart: Yeah, yeah. “Ma’am,” to the customer and I was like, “alright, since I work here, I’ll approach her.” And she goes, “No.” I said, “Do you know who you’re talking to?” She goes, “No, but it’s okay. I know what I’m doing.” And I was like, “Well someone overhead and said that you’re, you know, that you’re being scammed.” I was like, “Do you truly know who you’re talking to on the phone?” And she really fought me. I sat there and asked her a couple of questions and tried to use red flags, I tried to use, I can’t remember the question was, a red flag question is I think there is something there, “If you don’t know who you’re talking to, do, are you sure you should be doing this and putting that money in there?” And luckily, her husband had been sitting out in the car. I don’t know; this was a great scammer, whatever he or she had told this lady to actually convince her husband as well. These people are super topnotch. It goes from you leaving your destination where you’re at, physically going to the bank and withdrawing this cash, probably with a bank teller because it’s a couple thousand. I don’t know what the limit is on the ATM, I’ve never pulled, tried to attempt to pull that much money out, and they go from the bank to the Bitcoin machine and this whole time this is fighting traffic on the traffic, could easily, we could be at an hour now, they’re on the phone.

[00:21:45] Bob: Yeah.

[00:21:46] Eric Stewart: By the time we get to the Bitcoin machine, that’s an hour conversation easily, you know, so when I left it, I told her husband, I said, “Hey, y’all, that’s a scam that’s going on with your wife and everything,” and he goes, “I figured,” you know. “You might want to stop her.” And he went in there. I don’t know what happened, ‘cause I was leaving for the rest of the day and hopefully they didn’t go through, or the minimum.

[00:22:09] Bob: But she ultimately didn’t believe you. She believed the person on the phone.

[00:22:13] Eric Stewart: Yeah, yeah, that person was really good. Cause for her husband, for her to defy her husband who was with her as well, to go to the bank and had gotten that far. That person, unfortunately, they are really good at their job.

[00:22:28] Bob: Do you have, ‘cause one of the, I think, really important things you’ve mentioned is that when somebody comes in and they’re upset obviously, and they’ve got a lot of cash in their hands, they’re nervous, and so you’re very careful with how you approach them, right?

[00:22:43] Eric Stewart: Absolutely. Usually they have a phone in their hand, if it’s females, it’s going to be in the purse. The gentlemen, unfortunately, he had those little envelopes that you get from the bank, and you could see it in his pocket hanging out a little bit. I understand there was a lot of money, so I easily give him the space and let him know I’m not trying to rob you or anything, but I let him know I’m aware of the situation and of what’s going on. But yeah, most of them are just, they’re on the phone just like everyone else is, and but when they get to the machine they find it really easy, it’s right next to the ATM machine, so this is just like an average person coming in on the phone, but I wouldn’t say that they was hanging, having the money in their hands and all that, but yeah, I definitely give him the space. I give everyone the space ‘cause you don’t know, so some stranger’s walking up to you. And you had a machine that either you put money in or you take money out of, so obviously, you want to make them feel, I want to make them feel safe around me.

[00:23:44] Bob: So Eric has learned to approach potential victims with great care.

[00:23:49] Eric Stewart: And I try to pull a flashlight over their head, let them think, I try to let their mind, not me tell them, because me telling them is not going to mean nothing because these scam people are smart. But let me alert them and let their senses say “Hey, wait a minute.” I try to use easy language, understandable language because obviously there’s a lot going through this person’s mind; fear, anxiety, I’m pretty sure, a little bit of shock of “Hey, what is really going on?” So I’m sure this person’s feeling all these emotions so I try to make everything as simple worded, for them to understand that “Hey, yeah, you know what? Let me stop this and not do this.”

[00:24:35] Bob: You are natural at the psychology of the situation. We hear all the time when family members say, “That’s a scam” that people don’t listen. Because sometimes when you’re that direct with someone in that state of mind, they reject it, but you have described it as shining a light over their heads so they can figure it out themselves. How did you get so smart about psychology?

[00:24:55] Eric Stewart: I don’t know. Like I said, I’m a people observer, and uh, I was in management in the fast-food industry for many years.

[00:25:04] Bob: Aha.

[00:25:05] Eric Stewart: And I noticed every employee is different. Some, you don’t have to say nothing to, they just do a great job. Some, you have to pat them on the back. Some you just have to slowly guide them. And then others, you have to tell them, “Aw, man, that’s amazing. Great job!” ‘Cause they need to hear that. Everyone’s different in the workforce and just, so I observed that and just noticed that. And I guess I used that, me watching people, working with people, understanding how they work and I just use my intelligence to guide me through those situations, scenarios with them.