XCR1250 Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 News US News ‘We need our money back,’ slams Walmart shopper after losing $800 – even after showing receipt she didn’t get the cash Check your gift cards when shopping as they could be tampered with and part of a scam David Scott Published: 20:58 ET, Dec 10 2023 Updated: 1:00 ET, Dec 11 2023 A WOMAN claims to be out hundreds of dollars after purchasing Walmart gift cards. Susan Kunz bought $1,000 dollars in gift cards at a Houston, Texas, Walmart as Christmas gifts for the needy. 2 Susan Kunz lost hundreds of dollars in a gift card scamCredit: 2 She bought $1,000 in gift cards but someone was able to drain the moneyCredit: Getty When she checked to see the balance on the cards, she found that some of the cards were already completely drained. In total, three cards were wiped out worth $800. “The cards had been only in my possession so the question was ‘how does this happen?” Kunz said to NBC affiliate KPRC. “And if this is happening to us, who else has this happened to?” Kunz said that she returned to the store where she purchased the cards to figure out why they were empty. Yet even after showing her receipt to the floor manager, she claimed that she was not able to get the money back. She even said the staff were able to see surveillance footage of her transaction to prove that she was the person to make the purchase. Kunz said she was planning to give away the cards to families in need at her church. “If we had not gotten this figured out we would’ve been handing out cards to our families,” Kunz said. "They would’ve been filling up their baskets with toys and food. They would’ve gotten to the cash register and cards that had been given to them by a church would be empty and that is a terrible thing.” “We need our money back,” Kunz added. “We’re going to come up with something different for our families. We’ll be giving money to our families this Sunday. Obviously, we will not be giving them Walmart cards.” She filed a police report after Walmart failed to refund the money to her. “They don’t know whether this is possibly an inside job or whether it is just a situation where it has to do with people figuring out how to take Walmart cards and even though they do not have them in their possession they are able to use them,” Kunz said. “We don’t know. We have no answers.” “We can’t be the only people that are having this problem,” she continued. “There are going to be an awful lot of people at Christmas that are going to get their cards, they’re going to go and purchase things, and when they get to the cash register those cards will have no money on them. "That is a terrible thing. That is a terrible thing to happen.” Kunz has called for Walmart to remove the gift cards until it has found out what happened to her money to avoid others also losing out. “They need to figure out what’s going on,” she told NBC affiliate KPRC. “In the meantime, I myself would like to see them take every single one of those Walmart cards away from the cash registers so that no one else can use them.” Target locations in California have seen a similar scam take place. A scammer was discovered by undercover cops after tampering with gift cards and putting them on shelves. Thousands of gift cards were tracked to over 50 stores in the state. The scam works by replacing the bar code on the gift card, so when it is scanned and funds are loaded onto it, the money gets sent to the scammer. Target shoppers were warned about 'Bad Elf' gift cards after they were found in more than 50 stores. Walmart has also recently had to pay $4 million to customers affected by gift card scams. Walmart has deployed some innovative in-house technologies to prevent these scams. Since 2018, its efforts have returned almost $4 million to consumers. Walmart has set up a dedicated hotline for those who believe they may have been hit by a gift card scammer - (888) 537-5503. If you’ve been a victim of a scam, you can also report it to the Federal Trade Commission. Walmart did not respond to The U.S. Sun's request for comment at the time of publication. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voodoo Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 The scammers get the activation code off the card, then recover it and put it back on the shelf, or similar. They keep checking to see if it's active. Been going on a while., Better to buy the "card" online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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