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Linda, 71, lives in Moneta and has published five Southern Gothic novels since 2015. The first was “Cahas Mountain: Rodessa Rose the Moonshiner’s Daughter.�

In “an urgent and abrupt phone call,â€� Linda summoned her daughter to the gas station on Brambleton Avenue in Â鶹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø after withdrawing thousands in cash from the Bank of Botetourt.

When Noelle arrived, she observed Linda at the foot of a Bitcoin automatic teller machine, feeding it bills as fast as the ATM would accept them.

The process was cumbersome, because the machine would only take one bill at a time. So Linda encouraged Noelle to help. Noelle deposited $400 before she came to her senses and brought the bizarre scene to a screeching halt.

The events above occurred Monday in the city of Â鶹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø. And as you might expect, Â鶹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø police responded.

If you’re beginning to cringe, that’s appropriate. The events described were an elaborate scam in which Simmons, currently writing her sixth novel, got taken for $15,000. And the toll could’ve been worse.

Noelle and a young male bystander stopped Linda from depositing an additional $6,000 into the ATM.

Tuesday, employees at the store told me it wasn’t the first time people have been scammed with that Bitcoin machine. But Â鶹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø police said Simmons’ report Monday was the first documented scam report there going back to Jan. 1, 2024.

Now, the mother and daughter are trying to warn everyone not to fall for the same clever tricksters. It appears they’ve taken an old confidence game, the “jury-duty scam,� and updated it with a cryptocurrency element.

Already, this is a national problem. The Federal Trade Commission outlining the scam.

And in terms of geography, news accounts of the scheme vary widely. I’ve found articles about victims in ; ; ; ; and . (And there are more.)

For Linda Simmons, it began with a phone call she received 11:30 Monday morning as she babysat her 6-year-old granddaughter, Isabella, in Simmons’ Moneta home.

The caller-ID screen on her mobile phone read “Private number.� Simmons told me she answered because a friend frequently calls her that way.

This time the male caller on the other end persuaded Simmons he was with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office. He said he had two felony warrants for her. Those were issued because she had not shown up to serve on a grand jury, he said.

Earlier, the man told her, his office had twice sent her grand jury notices by email. Simmons told him she never received those documents.

But the caller insisted she had signed and returned them, confirming she would serve on a grand jury – and that subsequently she didn’t show up.

The charges were a serious matter, the caller continued. Simmons had to turn herself in that day.

If Simmons wanted to stay out of jail, the man said, she had to pay $7,000 bail in advance. And because in 2025 nobody at the Franklin County Courthouse accepts cash (another lie), she had to advance-pay at a cryptocurrency ATM, the caller said.

It would give her a receipt, which Simmons had to bring with her to court in Rocky Mount, he said. The guy also told her all the cryptocurrency ATMs in Franklin County were out of service. The nearest operating machine was in Â鶹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø, in a certain block of Brambleton Avenue, he added.

Simmons strapped Isabella into a car seat in the back of her Nissan sedan and drove to the nearest Bank of Botetourt branch. She left with $7,000 and headed for Brambleton Avenue. There, she deposited the cash into an account at a machine inside the gas station and got a $7,000 receipt.

During that process, she ignored a placard affixed to the machine. It reads: “WARNING: Have you received a call from someone demanding payment in Bitcoin? THIS IS LIKELY A SCAM. All Bitcoin transactions are irreversible. Send to your own wallet only. NOT SURE if you are being scammed? Call us for assistance at 678-435-9604.�

At one point, Simmons challenged the caller to confirm he was with Franklin County. The man recited the actual phone number of Franklin County dispatch and encouraged her to call it. She did, but only to confirm the phone number, rather than the warrants against her or bail demands.

The male caller also insisted Simmons keep the line on her mobile phone open during the drive to Â鶹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø and inside the gas station as she shoveled $7,000 into the cryptocurrency ATM. He added that he was tracking her movements.

After he learned she had deposited the $7,000 and was on her way to the Franklin County Courthouse with the receipt, the scammer told Simmons to stop because there had been a “big mistake� and she had been given incorrect information.

She needed to turn around and go back to the bank and get more money, the scammer added.

He explained that because Simmons had two felony charges against her, she needed $7,000 bail for each, or $14,000 total. Furthermore, he said, both deposits had to be listed on the same Bitcoin ATM receipt, which he called “a voucher.�

That meant the $7,000 receipt she already had was no good, he added. (The initial $7,000 would be refunded, the man claimed.)

At this point, Simmons was in her car in Â鶹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø County, heading for Rocky Mount. She turned around and visited the Bank of Botetourt branch in Cave Spring and withdrew $14,000 more.

Then she returned to the gas station. There she was able to use someone else’s phone to contact Noelle while the line remained open with the caller.

Simmons wanted her daughter to come pick up Isabella. But Noelle had carpooled to work Monday. So a colleague drove Noelle to the gas station, where she found her mom kneeling in front of the ATM, feeding it bills.

In a later post on Facebook, Noelle wrote:

“Sadly, I even entered four hundred dollars due to my mom’s panicking, but it just didn’t look right to me. My mom started to realize it was a scam after I refused to put in more money. I mouthed to a bystander to call 911 so I could have the police tell my mom that she had not done anything wrong and was not about to go to jail.�

Â鶹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø police responded at 3:41 p.m. By then the scam had been ongoing for more than four hours.

“The victim reported she received a call from a man claiming to work for the government who instructed her to send money over bitcoin to avoid criminal charges for missing court and she complied,â€� Â鶹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø police reported.

Tuesday, Simmons took the $6,000 she hadn’t lost back to her bank and deposited it. And then she visited the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, where she reported the fraud to Deputy Alvin Hagwood.

He told me this scam is “widespread.� It has also happened recently in Henry County, he said.

“The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office is not going to call you if you miss jury duty,� Hagwood said. For anyone who receives such a call, “I suggest you visit our office personally, to verify,� he added.

I called the phone number on the machine Wednesday, and left a message for a company spokesman. But no one called back by my 5 p.m. deadline, though the spokesman did send an email seeking more information on the case.

A Â鶹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø police news release noted that court officers will never ask anyone for payment, a credit card, or a Social Security number over the phone for failing to appear for a court date or jury duty.

“If you receive a call, email, or message demanding money or personal financial information, it is a scam,� the release notes. “If you have questions about the validity of a phone call, first hang up, then reach out to the court system directly.�

There’s one more notion Simmons asked me to address, and that relates to comments on Noelle’s Facebook post about the scam. A number of the commenters speculated Linda suffers from dementia.

She denies that. And after talking to her Tuesday and Wednesday, and posing a lot of questions, I’d wager her mind is sound.

But she’s too trusting, like many others who have fallen for the jury-duty-Bitcoin scam. Beware!