Buying an Apple gift card off the rack at your local pharmacy might not be as safe as you’d think. A scam ring that ran out of New Hampshire pulled the trick off for years, stealing hundreds of millions before getting caught.
While this specific criminal operation used New Hampshire as its primary base for laundering funds and exporting goods, the underlying scam is national in scope, with gift cards being compromised at retail stores across the country.
One bust alone turned up 4,000 iPhones, with the retail value being somewhere in the $8 to $9 million range. The same investigation is also linked to a murder in Derry, New Hampshire.
How the scam worked
Crews walked into stores, lifted Apple gift cards off display racks, and took them to a safe location. They’d then carefully peel back the packaging, write down the PINs, reseal the cards to make them look untouched, and place them back on the shelves.
Once a shopper bought the card and loaded it with, say, $50 or $100, the scammers would quickly drain the card of its balance.
The scammers spent the stolen funds on purchasing more Apple products, mostly iPhones and sometimes MacBooks, as these items are easy to resell overseas. In this instance, the hardware was shipped to China, Dubai, and parts of South America via gray markets.
The scam reportedly involved Chinese nationals. New Hampshire Police headed the investigation with assistance from the Department of Homeland Security, while Apple cooperated quietly from the sidelines.
The fix on the consumer side is pretty simple. Buy your Apple gift cards inside an actual Apple Store. Cards displayed at supermarkets, pharmacies, and convenience stores sit in the open too long and pass through too many hands to be considered safe.
Gift card scams are nothing new, but this operation stood out for its silent approach. While the FTC has long warned about phone-based scams in which callers impersonate IRS agents or utility companies and demand payment via gift cards, the New Hampshire ring didn’t need any phone calls. The damage was done before the victims ever noticed.
Source: 9TO5Mac