The report was carried out by Arnold Spencer, an ex-federal prosecutor, who showed just how easy it was for him to walk into any bitcoin ATM outlet, and pay up as much as USD 14,000 for Bitcoin transactions.
The report highlights how easy it is to buy Bitcoin without even presenting the required means of identification as mandated by the law. Furthermore, the report stated that many of these Bitcoin ATM (BTM) outlets do not always comply with tighter identity requirements for users, especially when conducting large transactions (e.g. exceeding USD 3000 in a batch), stating that they may be at risk of collusion in money laundering schemes and other illegal activities.The investigative journalist demonstrated evidenced how lax competing bitcoin ATM providers are about tighter money control and preventing the use of their machines for money laundering purposes.
The report states that because of the ease of exchanging cash for Bitcoins, more illegal elements, mostly in the form of drug cartels, are cleaning their money through these machines and are getting away with it –largely due to the ease of using fake IDs.
Overall, this puts many of these BTMs in clear violation of the US banking and anti-money laundering (AML) laws.
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