Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway filed a lawsuit on May 2026 against GPD Holdings LLC, the operator of CoinFlip Bitcoin ATMs, accusing the company of knowingly enabling scammers to defraud residents and concealing transaction fees that can exceed 22%. The suit, filed in the Circuit Court of Jasper County, seeks to permanently ban CoinFlip from operating in the state and impose fines of up to $1.8 million.
The complaint details three victims, starting with an 80-year-old military veteran who was contacted in fall 2025 by a person using the alias Selina Lee. Lee claimed to have made a fortune in crypto and convinced the veteran to use CoinFlip machines to send between $180,000 and $200,000 between September 2025 and March 2026. Each transaction came with a purported $5,000 to $15,000 fee, but the ATM never displayed the actual charge. The victim, now living on Social Security, lost all his savings and nearly his apartment.
The second victim, referred to as Jane Doe, received a call in March 2026 from someone impersonating a Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputy, who told her she had two warrants for missing jury duty. The caller knew about a prior jury-duty exemption, lending credibility. After pressure to pay $10,000, then reduced to $1,000, the woman withdrew cash and deposited it into a CoinFlip ATM at a vape shop. An employee warned her it was a scam, but the money had already been sent. CoinFlip’s support later offered only a $182.38 refund. The victim never saw any notice of transaction fees on the machine.
A third case from April 2025 involved a call from someone pretending to be from the Boone County Sheriff’s Office, demanding $9,600 for an arrest warrant. The victim was instructed to deposit $1,000 in a CoinFlip ATM, but after depositing $900 she realized the scam and tried to cancel. The transaction could not be reversed, and CoinFlip told her the money was lost.
The suit argues that CoinFlip markets itself as a “safe option” with a Know Your Customer process that acts as “a roadblock from criminal activities,” yet internal documents acknowledge that elder financial exploitation is “one of the fastest-growing forms of fraud.” Despite this knowledge, CoinFlip allegedly continues processing transactions because it earns a fee on each one. The lawsuit highlights that while the ATM shows a $2.99 fee, the real cost is buried in lengthy Terms of Service. In reality, for every $100 inserted, a customer receives only about $75.76 worth of Bitcoin, with over 24% going to CoinFlip. The Attorney General’s office asserts that the company could easily display the full fee on-screen but deliberately hides it.
The legal action is part of a broader crackdown on crypto ATM operators across the U.S. Bitcoin Depot, once the largest North American operator with over 9,000 machines, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Texas after facing more than $25 million in legal judgments in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone.
