A Maple Ridge, B.C., charity is warning others after it says it was the victim of a common gift card scam.
Recovery Kidz Society is a non-profit that provides gifts to children whose parents are in addiction treatment centres over the holidays.
Alexis Root, founder of the society, told Global News that they were contacted by an excavating company in Vancouver and asked if the society could help a family in need over the holiday season.
She said they agreed to help and bought a $500 gift card at a Shoppers Drug Mart in Pitt Meadows.
“They were located on the floor, they were not behind the till, and I didn’t think anything of it, I just grabbed it, paid for it with a couple of other things and I just gave them, I attached the little receipt on the back and gave it to them.”
Root said that later, the family called her and told her the gift card had nothing on it.
After trying to get answers over the phone, Root said she went back to that Shoppers Drug Mart, but there was no manager available.
“The person working there, she said to me, ‘Oh yeah, we know about that, it’s a huge scam,’” Root said she was told.
She added that she also found out how the scam happened. She said that someone took the gift card home, unwrapped it, then replaced it with a fake card, keeping the real one with the same barcode and numbers, and then they check the gift card numbers to see if they have been activated and loaded.
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“Once it was loaded, before I even gave it to this family, it was deposited into an online casino and then immediately withdrawn,” Root said.
She posted about the incident on social media and received more than one million views.
“It’s been a big crazy ride, tons and tons of comments,” Root said.
“We ended up getting the $500 gift card back. That is only because of the following that we have and tagging them over and over again and the video views.”
Loblaws told Global News that their teams in-store are trained to recognize tampering and other fraudulent situations involving gift cards.
Recovery Kidz Society provided gifts to 1,200 this year, which is run by volunteers.
Root said the replacement card, provided by Shoppers Drug Mart and given to the same family, also turned out to be empty. Loblaws could not be reached for further comment on Friday.
The family ended up getting money raised through a GoFundMe, Root explained.
And the Recovery Kidz Society is not alone in this experience.
Oxygen Yoga and Fitness CEO Jen Hamilton says she bought $2,400 worth of gift cards from a Shoppers Drug Mart in Vancouver and discovered within days that most of the cards had already been drained.
“We had over 500 people at our Christmas party, so I don’t even know who got what card, and that’s why I put something publicly,” she told Global News.
“One, just for people, if they’re going to go and use gift cards, that they’re prepared, that it might be at a zero value.”
Hamilton said she contacted the store, then corporate head offices, but is still waiting for answers.
“The customer service element was it was handled very poorly,” she added.
Experts say this kind of scam is becoming increasingly common, and in some cases, scammers pull gift cards from racks, record the PIN, and then put them back, as Root said she discovered.
“That PIN means that they know how to access the funds on that card, but only once it gets activated,” Claudiu Popa, a financial technology security expert, said.
“They apply tape over the top or simply put back what looks like legitimate cover, and all they have to do is wait for people to buy those cards.”
Root said she is going to do everything she can to make federal changes so there is a bill to protect consumers from fraud.
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