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
They steal gift cards from the display rack, carefully open them, record the numbers, reseal the card envelopes and return to the store.
When you purchase the card and the store activates it, we’ll it is typically not spent right away. You have it a couple days. You mail it to your friend, they try to use it later that week or month.
So the scammers check the card numbers periodically and jump on any that have been activated.
You would think that the gift card companies would pay attention to card numbers that are checked multiple times a week.
But as for scammers that get their victims to purchase cards… that’s digital cash. That’s cash in the cloud, a code on a spreadsheet.
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