Why Gift Cards Are Gold Mines for Scammers, Part 1

The Perfect Scam

AARP

True Crime, Aarp, Fraud, Society & Culture, Scam, Crime, Bobsullivan

4.5 • 980 Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many people see the colorful racks of plastic gift cards in checkout lines as convenient last-minute gifts. But criminals see a tool to steal money from unsuspecting consumers in a way that’s completely untraceable and irreversible. The crime is so common that Americans report the theft of $50 million via gift cards every three months, and many other cases are never reported. In this two-part special report, we meet three people who share their experiences with scams involving gift card payments and find out what researchers have discovered about measures to combat this pervasive form of fraud.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week on The Perfect Scamp, would you mind just reading off seven or eight of them to me?
0:06.3	There's an Apple gift card that I got from 7-Eleven. That was 500. I have a $500 Best Buy card and I purchased at Best Buy. I went to Kohl's to
0:18.5	Safora and I bought a thousand dollars. Here's another, some more gift cards from Target for $500.
0:26.7	There's a $2,000 from Nordstrom's rack.
0:30.5	How many of us just go through our daily lives and see that gift card rack and don't think two seconds about it unless we need to buy a gift?
0:38.0	Where else are billions of dollars being lost to Criminal Enterprises.
0:47.5	Welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your host Bob Sullivan.
0:50.3	For many people, those colorful racks of plastic cards at retail checkout lines represent an easy last-minute gift for someone.
0:59.0	But to criminals, they represent opportunity. perhaps the most efficient tool they've found to steal money
1:06.8	from unsuspecting consumers in a way that's untraceable and irrevocable. And for a growing number of Americans, gift cards represent a financial nightmare.
1:20.2	The Federal Trade Commission said recently that Americans report $50 million in losses to gift card fraud every three months.
1:27.0	More than double the amount from 2018.
1:30.0	And that's just the losses that are reported.
1:34.0	So today we begin a two-part special report on the problem of gift cards.
1:38.0	First, we're going to meet some gift card victims and let them tell their stories. Then we're going to tell you
1:44.8	about a brand new study conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota
1:49.0	sponsored by AARP involving undercover shoppers who tested store gift card security measures.
1:56.7	The results are pretty shocking.
1:59.5	But first, let's meet Henriette.
2:02.2	A criminal stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from her family and when he stole everything she had he turned to gift carts so he could steal even more.
2:13.0	Hey, my name is Henry at Schmull and I'm in North Aurora, Illinois.
2:18.0	And where is North Aurora?
	...

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