>Plus even if you could get your "gotcha" credit cards into the criminal's hands, the chance of law enforcement buying one back is tiny, since the stolen batch

>Plus even if you could get your "gotcha" credit cards into the criminal's hands, the chance of law enforcement buying one back is tiny, since the stolen batch is mixed with other cards, and only then a small sub-set is sold (since they verify if the card is still active, and meets other conditions). You wouldn't need law enforcement to buy it. You just need the bank to watch for a transaction on any of these cards that's not from the merchant it was assigned to.