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 either resell the cards at a discount or buy expensive products to resell. iPad Pros are a common option. It doesn’t much matter if they lose 20-30% of the face value of the gift card. Every cent they sell for is pure profit.
These gift cards are legitimate gift cards. A website can’t tell where you acquired it from. Even if they could, blocking the transaction would only harm the customer rather than the thief. Big ticket items have purchase limits to discourage resellers, but all that really accomplishes in making them use multiple accounts.
Even when resellers are blatantly obvious in store, the corporation has no incentive to take legal action. That would be costly, and the company has already been paid. Further, the actual scammers tend to throw a few bucks to someone in a vulnerable community to do the actual purchasing. You wouldn’t stop the scam by arresting them, and the only link they have to their boss is a burner number.
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