I think the part that makes it more difficult to detect that this is a scam for someone that never encountered it is that it relies on the difference between re

I think the part that makes it more difficult to detect that this is a scam for someone that never encountered it is that it relies on the difference between real money in your account and "money" that can vanish at any point, you just don't know it. This is a case that most people don't encounter outside of this kind of scam. Another unintuitive part is that even if the rules of the bank say the money is yours, it actually isn't if it came from a third-party that was hacked/scammed/whatever. The gift card thing is something that should trigger an alarm even if you never heard of it.