B.C. non-profit warns of gift card fraud during the holidays

A warning for anyone getting or giving a gift card this holiday season: scammers may have already stolen the balance.

And as if that’s not bad enough, one of the victims of this shameless rip-off was a children’s charity.

RecoveryKids, a non-profit that provides holiday gifts to children of parents residing at addiction treatment centres, has helped over 1,400 children this year.

It does this by purchasing gifts and gift cards for the children and their families. But when she bought a $500 gift card at Shoppers Drug Mart in Pitt Meadows, the money meant for a family in need went straight into the hands of a scammer.

The prepaid visa was drained before the family could even use the card.

“That family went into another Loblaws store and had a full cart of Christmas food, and it just makes me really emotional,” said Alexis Root, the organization’s founder.

“Can you imagine going through and having that gift card be zero?”

Root took to social media to share the story, and the responses from people coming forward to say they’ve experienced the same problem were overwhelming.

The scam can work in a variety of ways, but in short, the fraudsters tamper with gift cards left out on display, capturing the information on the back or even duplicating the cards. Then, when the cards are activated at the till, the scammers take the money before the intended recipient is able to cash in.

“What these people did to us is, before we could give this card, they ran it through an online casino,” Root said.

“Then they washed the money and put it back into their account as cash, and now they have cash.”

In a response to the incident, Loblaw — the parent company of Shoppers Drug Mart — issued a statement to The Leader Spirit, saying, “Our store teams are trained to recognize tampering and other fraudulent situations involving gift cards, doing their best to intercept suspicious transactions before purchase.”

The charity has since been refunded the $500 — good news for the family who will be reimbursed.

But this has left Root asking why retailers like Shoppers aren’t protecting gift cards the same way as other products that would be locked behind a counter or glass case.

“What I would like to see happen, nationally, is that every gift card that is going to be out there is treated like cash,” she said.

Root suggests that companies treat gift cards the way they do lottery tickets or other products that are kept behind the counter.

Gift cards have since been removed from the shelves at the Shoppers where she bought the fraudulent one, but Root says she intends to keep pushing for change.