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Nearly 25% of gift card users report stolen balances

Once customers buy the cards, activating the funds, thieves quickly spend the money.

SAN DIEGO — Thieves stole $228 million off gift cards last year through a crime called draining.

It usually happens at stores with large gift card kiosks that are placed in open areas, but away from store employees. 

The crooks record gift card numbers and pins, but leave the physical card on the shelf. Then, when you buy the card activating the funds, they have all the information they need to steal your balance.

“Gift card draining is an old scam,” said Eva Velasquez, President and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center. “And it can be drained within minutes, hours or days from that purchase. It happens very, very quickly.”

According to AARP, nearly one in four people in the U.S. say they have given or received a gift card that had no funds on them. It's so prevalent that police departments have made videos to help you spot targeted cards. 

Working for you, we checked with experts who warn that tampered packaging or a pin number that’s been exposed or is missing are red flags. 

Their advice? Avoid buying cards that are out in the open. 

“Purchase these from stores that actually have the cards behind glass that are physically protected and someone can actually see them,” Velasquez advised.

Google searches can lead you to websites that check gift card balances, but consider yourself warned. Those sites can use that same information to access the funds. 

“We have started to look at Google as if it’s the ultimate truth teller and it’s not,” Velasquez warned. “This is a search engine that is just pulling information that’s available on the web. It’s not vetting that information.”  

As a result, you should only check balances through the phone number or website printed on your gift card because once that money's gone, chances are good you're not getting it back. 

“It's very, very hard to recover the money, and I don't want people to have this false sense of I can just go and get it back,” Velasquez said. “It really is like cash.”

WATCH RELATED: Vista couple conned in Chase Bank fraud scam loses $49K (Feb. 22, 2024)

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