An article in the Coastal Federal Credit Union’s Beacon magazine [PDF] alerted me to an interesting scam involving gift cards.
In essence, the thief walks into a store where the gift cards are displayed openly. The thief makes note of the card numbers – either with a portable barcode scanner or a simple notepad – then returns the gift cards to the rack. At some point in the future (say, the day after Christmas) the thief calls the phone number to check the gift card’s balance. If there’s a balance on the card, the thief goes shopping online with the stolen card number, draining the card of its balance. They can only use the stolen number online because they don’t have the physical card, though with a mag stripe programmer a legit card could easily be reprogrammed with the stolen number.
This scam can be defeated by buying only gift cards that are held behind the counter. Also, gift cards with scratch-off PIN numbers are also relatively safe.
You can read more about the gift card scam at Scambusters.