California Attorney General Rob Bonta used a San Francisco press conference on October 20, 2026 to advise the public against cryptocurrency scams, according to a Bay City News report carried by NBC Bay Area. He said crypto ATMs should never be used.
The advisory named several schemes: AI-generated imitations of a familiar person's voice or appearance, celebrity-backed meme coins and "rug pulls," pig butchering, sextortion, "liquidity mining," and recovery scams that target people who have already lost money. The report does not mention older adults, so nothing in it should be read as an elder-specific finding.
The legal change is Senate Bill 1208, which Governor Newsom signed in early October and which Bonta sponsored. It lets the Attorney General's office petition a court to return stolen cryptocurrency to victims, even when the perpetrators are outside U.S. jurisdiction.
The report does not say how many cases the office expects to bring or how recovery would be paid out.
On the machines themselves, the report says the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation lists at least 60 crypto ATMs in San Francisco and that the real number is probably higher.
Vermont, Tennessee, Minnesota and Indiana have passed laws banning them, and San Diego is considering a local measure requiring scam warning signs on the machines. Bonta declined to comment on a possible statewide ban, saying that is for policymakers.
For a bank or adviser, the useful part is the recovery route. A client who has sent money to a crypto wallet now has a state office that can go to court, and a family member who hears about a "recovery" offer has a reason to be suspicious of anyone else claiming that power.
Larigent tracks state action on crypto kiosks as part of its work on prevention infrastructure. The report did not give figures for losses by older adults, and none are used here.
If this is your family
If your parent has lost money to crypto, ask them to bring any "recovery" offer to you before replying. The California law is a tool for the Attorney General's office, so anyone else who says they can retrieve the money, especially for an up-front fee, has not been given that power.
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