SACRAMENTO, Calif. — If you’re thinking of giving someone a gift card this holiday season, you might want to be aware of a new scam.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man accused of running a scam up and down the West Coast. It would have been a $2.89 million loss to consumers.
The sheriff's office now has a room full of gift cards. 5,739 gift cards to be exact, but a third of them are fake. They were all taken from one arrest at a Target store in Sacramento County.
Last week, undercover deputies with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office filmed the man switching out the gift cards, and when he exits the store, he’s tackled. When he hit the ground, 200 gift cards came falling out.
Detective Andy Cater made the tackle.
“We caught the guy who was working Target on the West Coast, but there are others working other retail establishments,” said Cater.
The scam works by taking real gift cards, scanning the bar code and taking the security code underneath the silver sticker. They place that silver sticker back on, re-glue the card and put it back on the store rack for you to buy.
Detective David Derouen says they found gift cards prepared to be placed in Target stores throughout the state of California.
“If you purchase this gift card and put $100 on it and give it to a family member or friend, the suspects have a computer system that once that’s card funded, the money is siphoned out and placed into an account...,” said Derouen.
ABC10 asked how do consumers protect themselves, but Derouen said, simply, "you can't." People would have to look very closely to see the tampering. Some might have a ding in them, some might not be glued all the way, some might be off center and others might not be sealed at the top.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office even tested ABC10's Devin Trubey. They gave her two stacks of cards to find the frauds. One time, she found them all, but the other time, she found none.
“To think that no one in our building had any idea this was happening leads us to believe the majority of the community doesn’t know it’s happening,” said Cater.
But this entire operation almost wasn’t discovered.
“Target told us they didn’t want to work with us, but we went and showed up anyway. We are going to be there regardless of whether they want to work with us, because the community deserves this level of service,” said Cater.
It wasn’t just Target gift cards; Apple store cards were also found. Investigators say this is happening at all major retailers.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office wants to see stores lock up gift cards like they’ve done with many other products to protect the consumer. They recommend, if you want to buy a gift card, go online to the specific store and purchase it there.
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