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
As to how they convert the gift cards to cash, there are websites that specifically do this. There are completely legitimate “exchange” websites where you can exchange your gift cards for other gift cards or for just a cash value. As an aside, you can use this too if gram gram got you a gift cards for a store you would never go to, but you want the cash.
Some of the value of the card is lost, like let’s say you can sell a $50 Amazon gift card for $45 cash. The less desire the gift card the less money you’re going to get for it.
You just need the gift card number, so that’s why scammers tend to gravitate to using them. Simply sending them the gc number is basically the same as instantly sending the cash, right over a phone call or text message. They don’t need the physical card, they just need the numbers. And gift cards are basically the same as cash anyway. Nice and anonymous
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