More More Gift Card Scams

I had noted the other day an article on a gift card scam whose aim was to steal information off the gift card so that when the card is purchased and money was put on it, the money was sent to Chinese bank accounts. In "Victim warns 'card draining' scam affecting major retailers left her gift card useless: It 'shocked' me," Fox News reports not only on that scam, but also about a different but similar scam:

    Barry Duggan, a patrol sergeant from the Pinole Police Department in California, warned of another method thieves are using to steal the card codes for themselves.

    "Somebody was taking [gift] cards from the store without paying for them and without loading them up... And what they do is they heat up these envelopes to where they can open them as carefully as they can, remove the card and actually cut the top of the card off," he said, according to a report from Patch, an outlet covering local news.

    The scammer keeps the portion of the card that contains the code and puts the bottom portion back into the envelope before re-gluing it shut. 

    "Just like that, you have a brand new gift card that you think that you're getting for your person for Christmas," Duggan said.