We all love gift cards, especially around the winter holidays. And as you can tell from multiple pages on this site, scammers love them too - just having the information off the physical card allows them to drain money that you’ll never see again.

The Gift Card Draining scam is something that catches unsuspecting consumers by surprise. The scammer doesn’t have to interact with the victim at all in this scam - they just have to wait for someone to load a card that they have all the information for, and then they go drain it.

Gift cards are compromised by a scammer - usually one of a team - smuggling a card out of a store. The card information is then recorded, the package is carefully - or not so carefully - resealed/repackaged, and a scammer returns the gift card back to the rack it came from. Once the card is loaded at the register, the scammers pounce, and the money is gone.

Card draining can also occur when bad actors get access to a gift card database - but this is much harder to detect.

How to protect yourself
There is little to be done in the case of a card drain caused by compromised access. You’ll just have to check the number against a balance checker (and you should, as this is what the bad actors are doing).

For physical cards, your best bet is to buy online or from a trusted source such as at a register - preferably from a person at the register.

If you can’t, check the card you’re picking up with several cards of the same type. Does the packaging seem uniform? Do the logos/colors/etc seem correct? Is there damage around the pull tab? Does the PIN covering match the other cards?

Even if everything seems safe, always check against a balance checker if at all possible to make sure the amount on there matches what you paid.