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> "My dad is not a gullible man." This article attempts to blame Target a couple of times for not doing enough. But this guy was also sitting in another store'

> "My dad is not a gullible man." This article attempts to blame Target a couple of times for not doing enough. But this guy was also sitting in another store's parking lot, Safeway, reading off gift card codes to the "DEA." No matter how smart you think your loved ones are, placing scrutiny on the stores the scammers have chosen (especially as a journalist) is going to do little except to add purchasing restrictions for everyone. A 17-year-old minimum wage cashier isn't going to save your dad, it's the last place to look to combat these "psychological tactics."

atomon 6y ago
There's a reason these scammers choose gift cards as their preferred way to get your money: gift cards have become the easiest way to move large amounts of money while minimizing the chances of getting caught. Every other business that deals with the transfer of money (banks, for example) is expected to put strong measures in place to make sure that the money is traceable and that they're not helping criminals. Why shouldn't large companies like Target be held to a similar standard? Moreover, the incentives here are very worrying. Yes this guy got scammed out of $3k, but Target also got $3k in revenue. Without some sort of penalty/punishment, Target is incentivized to do the bare minimum to minimize their PR exposure (which they can do by saying "we take this very seriously and have adopted some new policies" but not really acting on it) but to otherwise allow this to keep happening. As the prevalence of these gift card scams has skyrocketed, so have gift card sales for these large companies.
- boyesm 6y ago
  From what I understand, a retail store doesn’t make any profit selling gift cards for other stores. The Safeway in this story didn’t make any money off of that $2k purchase of Target cards and it could’ve saved/boosted its reputation if it had some better protective measures in place. It also means that maybe people who would’ve spent money at Safeway now can’t because they’ve lost several thousand dollars.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    > From what I understand, a retail store doesn’t make any profit selling gift cards for other stores. That seems dubious, considering they dedicate precious shelf and display space to selling them. Accounting can get crazy in the real world, but clearly they have a motive to move these things. The cards are on the shelf because the cards make money for the store, somehow.
    - yesplorer 6y ago
      perhaps they are banking on the person buying other profitable items while in the store for gift cards.
    - thatguy0900 6y ago
      I know that I have a lot of gift cards that go unused for months, or never used at all. Probably a lot of profit in interest on holding all the money and keeping anything not claimed after a few years.
    - nitwit005 6y ago
      It might be true that they make no money from the sale itself, but those displays are likely from a third party that is paying for the shelf space. If you do a search for something like "gift card distribution", there seems to be a bunch of marketing firms that you can pay to get gift cards made and put in stores.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  There's also an interesting sub-class of this scam that targets employees of certain size companies. Due to anti-bribery laws/rules/regulations gifts of cash to other companies are usually forbidden (and every employee with an expenditures line should generally be very aware of that), but non-cash redeemable gift cards are often still seen as fair "gifts" for various types of incentives/thanks/congratulations efforts. So gift card scams are sometimes even more effective for corporate employees, because corporations already abuse gift cards as a grease currency, and some corporate employees are very used to buying strange amounts of gift cards and giving them out in strange ways.
mdszy 6y ago
Stores already do tons of stuff to try to thwart these. I worked at a store years ago and we had all these things implemented: - Limit on gift card purchase amounts per customer, per day. - Stopped stocking Western Union cards because they were such a scam target. - There was also a scam where scammers would call the store itself to pose as a "corporate employee" who was "trying to verify that the gift card redemption system was working" and would have the cashier activate a gift card, run it as cash, and read off the numbers. And apparently that worked well enough that every time we activated certain gift cards, a massive box popped up on the POS screen saying "IF THIS TRANSACTION IS HAPPENING OVER THE PHONE, HANG UP IMMEDIATELY AND CANCEL THE TRANSACTION." At a certain point there's only so much that can be done by the store itself.
mdoms 6y ago
He keeps using terms like "intelligent", "cautious", "not gullible" to describe his dad but the man bought $3,000 of gift cards because he thought the DEA would accept them in exchange for not freezing his bank accounts.... the man's a moron. Sorry, but stupid is as stupid does. This is a very very stupid thing to believe.
- kube-system 6y ago
  As silly as it might sound at face value, smart people can be psychologically manipulated into doing very stupid things.
  - jmuguy 6y ago
    I would love to hear the specific script they use to convince people to buy gift cards. Everything leading up to that I can understand someone being suckered into - but how the hell do they convince people that a government agent wants them to buy gift cards?!
    - kube-system 6y ago
      The way con men are successful is usually not by directly convincing people that their scam is legit -- but instead they convince the person that they are trustworthy. Once they're seen as trustworthy, human brains tend to overlook facts, even obvious ones. Confidence scams work on a similar abuse of trust that April Fools jokes do... except they're a lot less funny.
    - walrus01 6y ago
      Some of this has been targeted at recent-immigrant ethnic communities from places where government corruption is endemic. From the point of view of the person being scammed, it actually is plausible that some person working for the IRS is demanding payment via a sketchy method.
    - rgovostes 6y ago
      Didn't RTFA but I know someone who fell for a similar scam. It involved multiple scammers calling them, claiming to be the IRS. They had personal details about the victim (gleaned from public records, no doubt). When the victim agreed to make a payment under threat of arrest, they were told the government doesn't take credit card payments over the phone, but a special agreement with Amazon allowed them to accept gift cards as they are guaranteed value and "as good as cash." From a distance it sounds ridiculous, but it was a surprisingly complex con with multiple participants and enough plausible details to make them seem legitimate. Refusing to take your credit card number over the phone must also disarm victims, what scammer would do so?

atomon 6y ago

There's a reason these scammers choose gift cards as their preferred way to get your money: gift cards have become the easiest way to move large amounts of money while minimizing the chances of getting caught. Every other business that deals with the transfer of money (banks, for example) is expected to put strong measures in place to make sure that the money is traceable and that they're not helping criminals. Why shouldn't large companies like Target be held to a similar standard? Moreover, the incentives here are very worrying. Yes this guy got scammed out of $3k, but Target also got $3k in revenue. Without some sort of penalty/punishment, Target is incentivized to do the bare minimum to minimize their PR exposure (which they can do by saying "we take this very seriously and have adopted some new policies" but not really acting on it) but to otherwise allow this to keep happening. As the prevalence of these gift card scams has skyrocketed, so have gift card sales for these large companies.

boyesm 6y ago
From what I understand, a retail store doesn’t make any profit selling gift cards for other stores. The Safeway in this story didn’t make any money off of that $2k purchase of Target cards and it could’ve saved/boosted its reputation if it had some better protective measures in place. It also means that maybe people who would’ve spent money at Safeway now can’t because they’ve lost several thousand dollars.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > From what I understand, a retail store doesn’t make any profit selling gift cards for other stores. That seems dubious, considering they dedicate precious shelf and display space to selling them. Accounting can get crazy in the real world, but clearly they have a motive to move these things. The cards are on the shelf because the cards make money for the store, somehow.
  - yesplorer 6y ago
    perhaps they are banking on the person buying other profitable items while in the store for gift cards.
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    I know that I have a lot of gift cards that go unused for months, or never used at all. Probably a lot of profit in interest on holding all the money and keeping anything not claimed after a few years.
  - nitwit005 6y ago
    It might be true that they make no money from the sale itself, but those displays are likely from a third party that is paying for the shelf space. If you do a search for something like "gift card distribution", there seems to be a bunch of marketing firms that you can pay to get gift cards made and put in stores.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
WorldMaker 6y ago
There's also an interesting sub-class of this scam that targets employees of certain size companies. Due to anti-bribery laws/rules/regulations gifts of cash to other companies are usually forbidden (and every employee with an expenditures line should generally be very aware of that), but non-cash redeemable gift cards are often still seen as fair "gifts" for various types of incentives/thanks/congratulations efforts. So gift card scams are sometimes even more effective for corporate employees, because corporations already abuse gift cards as a grease currency, and some corporate employees are very used to buying strange amounts of gift cards and giving them out in strange ways.

mdszy 6y ago

Stores already do tons of stuff to try to thwart these. I worked at a store years ago and we had all these things implemented: - Limit on gift card purchase amounts per customer, per day. - Stopped stocking Western Union cards because they were such a scam target. - There was also a scam where scammers would call the store itself to pose as a "corporate employee" who was "trying to verify that the gift card redemption system was working" and would have the cashier activate a gift card, run it as cash, and read off the numbers. And apparently that worked well enough that every time we activated certain gift cards, a massive box popped up on the POS screen saying "IF THIS TRANSACTION IS HAPPENING OVER THE PHONE, HANG UP IMMEDIATELY AND CANCEL THE TRANSACTION." At a certain point there's only so much that can be done by the store itself.

mdoms 6y ago

He keeps using terms like "intelligent", "cautious", "not gullible" to describe his dad but the man bought $3,000 of gift cards because he thought the DEA would accept them in exchange for not freezing his bank accounts.... the man's a moron. Sorry, but stupid is as stupid does. This is a very very stupid thing to believe.

kube-system 6y ago
As silly as it might sound at face value, smart people can be psychologically manipulated into doing very stupid things.
- jmuguy 6y ago
  I would love to hear the specific script they use to convince people to buy gift cards. Everything leading up to that I can understand someone being suckered into - but how the hell do they convince people that a government agent wants them to buy gift cards?!
  - kube-system 6y ago
    The way con men are successful is usually not by directly convincing people that their scam is legit -- but instead they convince the person that they are trustworthy. Once they're seen as trustworthy, human brains tend to overlook facts, even obvious ones. Confidence scams work on a similar abuse of trust that April Fools jokes do... except they're a lot less funny.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    Some of this has been targeted at recent-immigrant ethnic communities from places where government corruption is endemic. From the point of view of the person being scammed, it actually is plausible that some person working for the IRS is demanding payment via a sketchy method.
  - rgovostes 6y ago
    Didn't RTFA but I know someone who fell for a similar scam. It involved multiple scammers calling them, claiming to be the IRS. They had personal details about the victim (gleaned from public records, no doubt). When the victim agreed to make a payment under threat of arrest, they were told the government doesn't take credit card payments over the phone, but a special agreement with Amazon allowed them to accept gift cards as they are guaranteed value and "as good as cash." From a distance it sounds ridiculous, but it was a surprisingly complex con with multiple participants and enough plausible details to make them seem legitimate. Refusing to take your credit card number over the phone must also disarm victims, what scammer would do so?