Buying a gift card as a gift is both an easy way to purchase a gift for someone and a good way to make sure that the gift is something that the receiver of the gift can actually use and enjoy.  It definitely is a win-win situation.  However, scammers are always ready to take any good thing and turn it into a scam.  I have been warning you about gift card scams for more than ten years.

The most common gift card scam involves scammers going to racks of gift cards in stores and using handheld scanners that are easy to obtain, read the code on the strip of the card and the number on the front.  They then put the card back in the display and periodically check with the retailer by calling its 800 number to find out whether the card has been activated and what the balance is on the card.  Once they have this information they can either create a counterfeit card using the information they have stolen or order material online without having the actual card in hand.

Scammers also will create barcodes on stickers that they place over the barcode of gift cards that they take from the racks in stores and then replace waiting for someone to take it off the rack to purchase it.  When the unwary victim takes the card to the clerk at the register, funds are loaded not on to that particular card, but rather on the card with the barcode already owned by the scammer.  Recently, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man they noticed tampering with cards at a gift card rack in a Target store.  When they arrested him outside the store, they found 200 cards on him and 5,000 more Target and Apple gift cards in his car.

TIPS

When buying a gift card, only purchase cards at brick and mortar stores from behind the customer service desk and if the card is preloaded, always ask for the card to be scanned to show that it is still fully valued.  Some retailers, in an effort to reduce gift card fraud, will also put a PIN on the gift card so that if the card is used online, the user must have access to the PIN which is generally covered and must have the covering material scratched off in order to be visible.  Unfortunately, many purchasers of gift cards are not aware of this so they don’t even notice that the PIN on the card that they are purchasing has already had the covering material scratched off by the scammer who has recorded the PIN.  Always inspect the card to see if it appears to have been tampered with such as by having a sticker with a new bar code covering the card’s barcode.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”