Why Gift Cards Are Gold Mines for Scammers, Part 2

The Perfect Scam

AARP

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

4.5 • 980 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2022

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Part 2 of this special report, we look further into the dark side of the gift card market, where criminals turn gift cards into a tool to steal money from unsuspecting consumers in a way that’s completely untraceable and irreversible. We’ll hear from University of Minnesota researcher Marti DiLiema, who conducted a study with undercover shoppers, and delve into whether retailers’ efforts to combat gift card fraud are successful.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week on The Perfect Scamp.
0:03.0	The really concerning cases were when the cashier turned to my secret job
0:07.0	and said, you know, we have a limit.
0:09.0	We can only do up to 200 on this card.
0:11.0	So what we can do is we can split your transaction.
0:14.7	And so they were identifying ways to serve their customer by helping them with what the request
0:20.6	was, but really it was overcoming the controls that were put in place to protect against fraud.
0:25.6	They were helping the criminals in effect. Yeah, in effect.
0:38.0	When a frenetic consumer shows up at a store looking to buy thousands of dollars in gift cards, sent there by criminals as part of a scam, what happens next? How hard do retail stores try to stop
0:46.1	transactions when shoppers, many obviously under duress, try to buy gift cards as
0:51.6	part of a scam.
0:53.0	Thanks to a secret shopper experiment conducted by University of Minnesota researchers,
0:58.0	today will tell you what goes on behind the cash register
1:02.0	when gift card fraud shows up at the store.
1:06.2	Welcome back to the perfect scam and this special two-part episode on gift card fraud.
1:10.9	I'm your host Bob Sullivan.
1:13.2	Americans report theft of $50 million via gift cards every three months.
1:19.3	And that's just the theft that gets reported. The colorful plastic cards are a quick easy gift for many
1:26.2	consumers, but they've also turned out to be a gift for criminals who love their anonymity
1:32.4	and the fact that it's nearly impossible to reverse gift card
1:35.9	transactions.
1:37.8	Last week we heard from a series of gift card fraud victims.
	...

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