I have read so many of the scammers asking for payment via steam, iTunes, and other gift cards. How does that make them any actual money? Short of on selling the codes for less than their worth…
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There are sites to do exactly what you suggested. You can trade all these for real cash at a slight loss.
>Short of on selling the codes for less than their worth…
There you go; that’s the answer. They scam someone for a $100 gift card, then they sell the $100 gift card for $80 cash as a “great bargain”. Now they have cash in hand, and they have multiple layers of innocent victims to cover up their tracks.
And you would think everyone would have heard of this but I worked in retail and we got 2-3 people a month. And not just old people, young, intelligent tech savvy people too. I stopped so many people from buying gift cards it was crazy. I started out being diplomatic “are you sure you need these cards?” to being very in your face “you are getting scammed and will never see your money again”. It got to the point where the customers were coming in with the scammer on the phone and if they heard me telling the customers about scams you could here the scammer on the phone “get out, go somewhere else, don’t listen to him…” Sad and funny at the same time.
They do sell them for less, unless they have something they want to buy directly, but that is less common. Scammers overseas work on volume. Just like buying debt. You buy $100,000 in debt across 100-200 accounts for $100, then try to collect (as a collection agency) on the $100,000. You’ll might only get $5,000 for your effort, so you made $4,900 excluding hours worked.
Here is the ELI5:
Imagine you are in a playground and you have a special golden ticket that lets you buy ice cream. This golden ticket is like a gift card for Steam, iTunes, etc. Now, you do not want ice cream, but your friend does.
Your friend offers to trade you some of his marbles for your golden ticket. You agree and give him the ticket, and he gives you marbles. Now, you can trade those marbles with other kids for something you really want, like stickers or toys.
In the same way, scammers collect gift card codes and then trade them for real money or other valuable things. They might sell these codes online for less money than the actual worth of the gift card. This way, they turn something that is less useful to them (the gift card code) into something more useful (money or other goods).
So, the scammers are essentially converting these gift cards into a more liquid asset that they can easily use or sell.
Depending on what the scammers wants, Amazon gift cards can be sent to you by someone who has no idea who you are and the sender can’t take them back. That can make them just a viable payment method for illegal anonymous transactions.
There can also be an aspect of money laundering going on if the scammers partners have ‘songs’ and ‘games’ available on those platforms to purchase. Then it’s good clean income.
They sell the codes for less than they are worth but more than what they spent to get poor soul to go buy it for them with their money
Have you ever seen a really crappy game on Steam that was really expensive? Maybe a game you can beat in 5 minutes with bad graphics that costs $200? Sometimes that’s done to launder money. All those Steam gift cards are used to buy the game from somebody that made a quick and easy game. The profits from the game are from gift cards that were scammed, and making profits from games becomes actual money. This is just one way it’s done. Probably could make an app on iTunes and do the same thing with iTunes gift cards.
You still make money selling something for less than it’s worth, if you paid $0 for it because you stole it or got it via fraud.
I think it’s untraceable, which is why they use them.
A slight loss is worth staying off the radar.
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