Political Quotes

“now on a totally different subject, I would like to tell you about one of my constituents. He is a man from New Lenox, IL, in the suburbs of Chicago. Late last year, he received an urgent phone call from someone claiming to be a deputy in the Will County Sheriff's Office. This self- proclaimed deputy informed my constituent that he had missed jury duty. As a result, the deputy said, there is a warrant out for your arrest. The man was stunned. Don't worry, the deputy further explained. The man could avoid arrest, put the whole matter behind him. All he had to do was pay the fine. But he couldn't pay it by check or credit card. The deputy directed the man to a local cryptocurrency ATM machine and told him to deposit $15,000 into the machine, pay the fine, and all would be forgiven. If you have been following the news, you might have guessed by now that the man on the phone wasn't a sheriff's deputy at all; he was a scammer. Once my constituent deposited his money into the crypto-ATM, it was gone--gone. There was no way to trace the transaction to the scammer and no way to get the money back. This is just one example of a growing and alarming trend of crypto- ATM fraud. There are now more than 30,000 crypto-ATMs in this country, and they are being used by criminals to cheat Americans out of their hard-earned savings, to the tune of $114 million in 2023 alone. Most of the victims are senior citizens.…”