Warnings have been issued across the country as gift card scams continue to mount.
While gift cards offer a flexible way to show someone you care this holiday season, the authorities have warned that their balances are being increasingly targeted by scammers. In November, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) announced a 50% increase year over year in the number of gift card fraud reports it had received from consumers.
Although fraudsters texting or calling victims and requesting gift card payments while pretending to be someone else — such as a loved one, a representative of Amazon, or a police officer — is nothing new, this novel scheme drains gift card balances purchased by unsuspecting shoppers.
“Scammers are already getting to the gift cards before you even purchase it and leave the store,” explained Bao Vang, vice president of communications for BBB in Minnesota and North Dakota, according to CBS News.
The thieves are either placing their own barcodes on top of the barcodes of a given gift card or tampering with packaging or security stripe used to take note of the card’s information.
“They’re just waiting for someone to load money onto it and activate the card and the moment it does, then the scammer is alerted and then they’re going to drain that account of the $5, $500, $1,000. And then the recipient of the card will no longer have anything,” Vang continued.
This is what recently happened to Suzanne Gdovic of Colorado. She purchased a Target gift card for an expectant mother and loaded it with $200. Yet the recipient later found that the balance had been drained.
“She went to Target to try to use it, and she was at the cash register checking out, and she was told there was a zero balance on the card and was also told that the gift card was assigned to another person’s account. There was no money there for her to use for all of the things that she was buying for the new baby,” Gdovic explained, according to Fox News.
Although the store itself couldn’t do anything to reimburse Gdovic, she was able to get a new gift card worth $200 through “a lot of persistence.” She recommended that anyone buying a gift card this holiday season double-check for any signs of tampering, snap photos of the cards, and hold on to all receipts.
Purchasing the gift card with a credit card might also prove helpful, according to Gdovic, since these companies are more accustomed to fraud claims and have a protocol in place for disputing customer charges.
Target released a statement about gift card scams, telling the public that it was taking the rise in such offenses “very seriously.”
“We have signs in our stores and share general safety tips with our team members so they can stay alert and help guests as best as they can at our registers. Our centralized cyber fraud team helps educate our team members about common scams and encourages them to look for guests purchasing high dollar amounts or large quantities of gift cards, or tampering with gift cards in stores,” Target stated, per CBS.
In Dallas, 2,312 fraud offenses had been logged this year as of December 18, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard. However, the rising trend in criminality appears to be especially oriented toward shoplifting, with these offenses doubling year over year from 1,623 to 2,542, as previously covered in The Dallas Express.
The Dallas Police Department has struggled to combat crime amid an ongoing staffing shortage. While the department currently has only around 3,200 officers in the field, a City analysis suggests employing as many as 4,000 to adequately promote public safety.
This staffing shortfall is most apparent in Downtown Dallas, which logs considerably more crime than Fort Worth’s city center. The latter is patrolled by a dedicated police unit that works alongside private security guards.
