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The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has charged a London man, Olumide Osunkoya, 45, with operating several unregistered cryptocurrency ATMs, marking a significant milestone in the country’s regulation of digital assets.
According to the FCA’s announcement on September 10, Osunkoya facilitated cryptocurrency transactions worth $3.4 million between December 2021 and September 2022 across multiple locations without proper licensing. The UK currently has no legally operating crypto ATMs, and this is the first criminal prosecution related to unregistered cryptoasset activities under the UK’s 2017 anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulations.
Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, stated, “Our message today is clear. If you’re illegally operating a crypto ATM, we will stop you. If you’re using a crypto ATM, you are handing your money directly to criminals. Criminals can exploit crypto ATMs to launder money globally.”
The FCA’s case highlights growing regulatory scrutiny of crypto ATMs, which are increasingly linked to financial fraud. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported a tenfold increase in consumer losses to scams involving bitcoin ATMs, rising to $114 million in 2022.
The FCA and other regulators have flagged crypto as a preferred payment method for various scams. In a related development, the FBI’s Cryptocurrency Fraud Report revealed that cryptocurrency-related complaints made up 10% of all financial fraud complaints in 2023, but accounted for half of the total losses—totaling $5.6 billion. The FBI also noted that the decentralized and irreversible nature of cryptocurrency transactions makes them attractive to criminals and difficult for authorities to trace and recover.
As regulators on both sides of the Atlantic ramp up enforcement efforts, this landmark prosecution signals a clear warning to illegal operators in the crypto space.
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