What the scammer did is wrong, and the plight of the victim is easy to relate to here. It's easy to have a sense of personal outrage after reading this story. B

What the scammer did is wrong, and the plight of the victim is easy to relate to here. It's easy to have a sense of personal outrage after reading this story. But let's keep a sense of proportion in mind: it is $500 worth of gift cards that the victim couldn't use and had been trying to get rid of for 4 years. I suspect that anyone trying to get free gift cards off of Reddit is pretty small-time. I think telling the parents and leaving it at that is probably the right thing to do. We should reserve our energy, outrage, and enforcement for the scammers who do the greatest damage. Scammers that have made millions, hired armies of lawyers, even made friends in power who have rewritten the law to favor them. The petty criminal deserves a petty punishment.