A Colorado resident is among the latest victims of “card draining” after the $200 she loaded onto a Target gift card was stolen in an elaborate scheme that lately has become a holiday problem, according to industry officials.
Suzanne Gdovic, 64, gave the gift card to a friend’s pregnant daughter, but when the woman went to Target to try to use it, she was told there was a “zero balance on the card,” according to Fox News.
She “was also told that the gift card was assigned to another person’s account,” Gdovic told the outlet. “There was no money there for her to use for all of the things that she was buying for the new baby.”
A store manager told Gdovic that she was a victim of a new “card draining” scam, where thieves tamper with unpurchased gift cards to obtain a barcode number and pin either by removing a sticker or scratching off a silver film.
Thieves then restore the gift card, using similar-looking silver stickers or labels to cover the gift card’s barcode.
When the card is purchased and loaded with cash, the fraudsters get direct access to those funds, which they swiftly spend before the recipient has the chance.
In Gdovic’s case, the back of the gift card was exposed ahead of the purchase, “so it was very easy for them to access the information off the back of the card,” she told Fox.
“There was a silver lining on there. That protective security code had been scratched off, numbers were taken when they took that gift card out of the store. Then they expertly [put] back on that silver lining,” she said.
“I picked it up. They had all the information. I loaded it, and when they have an elaborate scheme [they use] the computer with the coding to figure out when you put the money on the card, and then they stole that money off the card way before she went into the store to use it,” Gdovic said, according to Fox.
Nonprofit business industry watchdog Better Business Bureau’s Scam Tracker said that there’s been a 50% increase in card draining compared to last year.
From January through September, over 1,000 card-draining instances were reported to the BBB — up from 822 cases the year prior — though “no consumers” ever reported recovering money in a gift card scam, the organization said.
It’s unclear if the BBB’s tally includes the 285 felony and misdemeanor arrests made by the Sacramento County police department made earlier this month regarding a massive retail theft operation that included card draining.
“During our recent retail theft Operation Bad Elf, detectives observed an individual, later identified as Ningning Sun, acting suspiciously near the gift cards in the payment aisles in a Sacramento Target store,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release.
After the arrest, detectives made their way to Sun’s car and found thousands of Apple and Target gift cards set to be returned to store shelves before unsuspecting shoppers would then purchase one of the cards and load funds onto it that would immediately transfer to a bank account.
In Sun’s case, the money was likely transferred to a Chinese bank account, Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Amar Gandhi said.
Gdovic, however, said that after getting in touch with Target’s corporate office in November, the retailer gave her the $200 back after “a lot of persistence” — two months after originally buying the gift card, she told Fox.
The con has become so popular in recent months that TikTok even has popular hashtags — #GiftCardScam and #GiftCardScamAwareness, which boast a combined 11.2 million views — that are dedicated to victims who share their experience with compromised gift cards.
The BBB’s top tips for avoiding gift card scams this holiday season: “Be on guard if anyone ever asks for payment through a gift card; stop immediately if a person claiming to be from the government asks for a gift card; and keep all information related to purchase if scammed.”
The group also advises Americans who feel they’ve fallen prey to savage gift card scammers to “contact the gift card seller, the actual business and government organization supposedly asking for money, and BBB.”
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