A number of California law enforcement agencies are sounding the alarm on bitcoin scams.In Butte County, Chico police are calling for a ban of bitcoin ATMs. The department addressed the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, raising concerns about the machines found throughout the area.Chico police officials said while the machines are legitimate, there is a lack of regulations that typical bank ATMs have. Due to the lack of oversight, scammers can use the machines to their advantage. In many instances, a scammer called a victim and convinced them to withdraw money from a bank and then deposit it into a bitcoin ATM. The suspect was then able to gain access to the victim’s bitcoin wallet information.Over the past 16 months, there have been 25 reports of this scam to police in Chico. More than $200,000 has been lost by victims in total, police said.”It’s about $70,000 to purchase one bitcoin,” said Kory Honea of the Butte County Sheriff’s Office. “I don’t know about you but legitimate financial transactions equaling $70,000 do not occur in liquor stores while you’re feeding cash into some machine.”The Placer County Sheriff’s Office sent out its own warning about bitcoin scams.Officials said two incidents involving bitcoin scams were reported on Monday night alone.A government agency or banking institution would never ask you to transfer your funds into bitcoin, said Sergeant Michael Cuevas.If you suspect someone is trying to scam you, contact your local law enforcement agency.

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