I was discussing different scam techniques I have heard of/seen with my husband the other day. I wondered out loud… “what do these guys do with iTunes or whichever gift cards they get?” Obviously they are not shopping at the Apple Store?
He said they have a way to get the money out of them, but didn’t know how it worked. I assume he’s right… now I am curious how does this happen, and why can’t apple or google make it harder for the scammers to use their gift cards?
EDIT – lots of good explanations! I was talking specifically about gift card scammers who convince their victims over phone/email/text to purchase gift cards and send them the activated codes. TIL there are many ways to use gift cards to scam ppl.
In: Technology
For apple store and Google play gift cards, they’ll have a fake app or game on the app stores for $5-$50 with a bunch of in-app purchases. They’ll then use the gift cards to buy those apps and in-app purchases where the money will be put into an actual bank account that they control. Or they’ll make a song or album and put it on the applestore and what used to be the Google music store and just buy that over and over again. No one will care about some music that came from a small country with no internationally recognized artists or bands.
For stores like Dicks, Macy’s, box-stores or items that you can ship in a card board box across the country or internationally, they’ll buy actual merchandise with them and sell them on Etsy or ebay or elsewhere.
Last is they’ll just sell the numbers online for cheaper than what it’s worth. They didn’t buy them so whatever they make on them is pure profit. Say your grandma sent them a gift card for $500. They’ll sell the code online for $200 and male $200 off of it.
None of the businesses that sold the gift cards care because they already received them when the scammed person bought them, so it doesn’t cost apple, Google, Macy’s, Dicks any money at all.
Latest Answers