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Gift cards fraudulently used -- $250 in gift cards worthless

Discussion in 'Non-Vegas Chat' started by Flowers, Dec 5, 2019.

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  1. breanna61

    breanna61 Super Moderator

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    Wonderful way to look at it and the sentiment in the latter scenario warmed my heart. Thanks Timbuck.
     
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  2. STS05

    STS05 Onward

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    Im sorry to hear that happened. It’s a shame that people take advantage of situations like that. I know when I post pics of my TITOs, I always do it AFTER I’ve already redeemed it. If it’s a future sports bet, I cover the barcode or use the markup feature to scribble out the code.

    I would also suggest to never post pics on social media like Facebook while on trips, out on the town, etc...if your privacy setting aren’t right, friends of friends/sketchy family can see those posts and take advantage. Happened to some friends of ours while they were out of state. Came home to over $10k worth of stuff stolen from the house. Criminals were dumb though and pawned a bunch of it and were picked up days later. One was a cousin of the wife who saw his mom comment on her post showing them at dinner.
     
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  3. Chuck2009x

    Chuck2009x VIP Whale

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    Except Caesars Palace security handled it the opposite way.

    Luckily I knew the exact amount I had left on the machine. And the supervisor was able to verify that.

    While a couple of the security crew was talking to the woman who was playing at the machine I had left credits on, the supervisor and another security guy were standing with me (across the room). The security guy said "Our cameras are very good." and then a little later "Do you want to press charges?" And I said, "Nah, I kind of look at it as finders keepers," at which point the supervisor shook her head and said, "No, it's not."

    I ended up getting 2/3rds of the money back.

    Sorry that happened, Flowers, annoying as hell and creepy too.
     
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2019
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  4. Multifarious5

    Multifarious5 VIP Whale

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    You are the best Chuck! I remembered Caesars was MUCH better about working with you, I was just pissed someone was OK burning through 1/3 of your money, ESPECIALLY since you were so classy about it.

    Bottom-line Flowers, there are chivalrous and un-chivalrous people in the world, and you're absolutely in the chivalrous camp! I am wishing good things your way!!!:blowkiss::blowkiss::blowkiss:
     
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  5. dmr

    dmr Registered Abuser

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    Sanity check here. Will retail stores such as supermarkets and bodegas and such do such a non-swipe card-not-present transaction using a gift card?
     
  6. Flowers

    Flowers VIP Whale

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    Thank you @Multifarious5. :love:
     
  7. Flowers

    Flowers VIP Whale

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    I don't think so though NFC said fake but usable cards can be made with a magnetic strip using a stolen GC number.
     
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  8. NCAAHoops

    NCAAHoops VIP Whale

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    So sorry this took place when you just want share you travels with others. Myay you have a profitable up coming trip to vegas to regiup your loss
     
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  9. NotFromConcentrate

    NotFromConcentrate It’s a Cassowary :)

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    Officially, almost certainly not.

    In reality, I’m sure many will... particularly if it’s an inexperienced cashier who is afraid to ask for help, and a confident-sounding customer seems to know what they’re doing to make the payment go through.

    I faced one such fraudster many years ago at a restaurant I worked at. Guy wanted to place a to-go order, and when I asked him how he’d like to pay he said on credit and showed me a series of digits on his BlackBerry’s screen. I asked him what that was, and he said something to the effect of “You just enter this number manually into the terminal. This is how corporate expense accounts work.”.

    I didn’t buy it for a second, but I can imagine that many others would have, especially with the intimidation of not wanting to upset the type of customer who claims to have a corporate expense account.
     
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  10. jr7110

    jr7110 VIP Whale

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    @Flowers I am so sorry to hear this happened to you, but I also believe karma will get whoever did this. I don't think any regulars here on the Board would do something like that, but unfortunately anyone can just go onto the site and see all of the posts without ever being a member or logging in. It's really disgusting that someone did this to you (and during the holidays on top of it), but you posting your experience probably saved someone else from going through the same thing.

    Going forward, if you have a smartphone it's easy to edit the photos to block sensitive information. If you aren't able to do that, you can cut a small piece of paper out and place the gift card or whatever flat on a surface and take the photo with the paper covering the information. I hope whoever ate at all those restaurants on your gift cards got food poisoning, malaria and a chronic case of explosive diarrhea (not necessarily in that order).
     
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  11. insin

    insin Speed Spender

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    I’ve been given loose gift cards where the amount gifted is not printed on the card itself, but it is determined by the person who gifted it to me.

    .... And then I when I tried to use those gift cards...... they were declined as having a zero balance.

    Since I didn’t have the activation receipt or “chit” the company in question told me I was SOL. No offer of recourse was given to me. I thought that was really shitty.

    When I give gift cards I always make sure to tape that little activation receipt on the card too “just in case”.



    Reading this whole thread has made me rethink giving physical gift cards that are sold open and are visible to anyone. Now I would only consider buying the gift cards sold in blister packs where the card numbers are not visible.

    Sad that there are people that live to scam others instead of working for their own stuff legitimately.

    - I have also accidentally left credits or TITOS in machines .......stepped far enough away that I had them snatched by some opportunistic turd of a human being.

    Security was able to help me recover funds in my case, but it was infuriating to have to just calmly watch the smug bastard keep spinning away all my credits.

    Yes, a casino will tell you that it’s your fault. And it is. But, it’s very easy for security to review/confirm who the rightful owner is and take care of the situation.

    People who loiter around in casinos watching other people gamble but aren’t gambling themselves have probably already been flagged by security.
     
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  12. insin

    insin Speed Spender

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    From what I’ve read, using a photo editor to blur or block out portions of images is easily Undo-able with the right program.

    It’s better to manually block the image with a physical object.
     
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  13. TableToddyy

    TableToddyy VIP Whale

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    Thank you for sharing. Especially before the holidays. Probably saved someone else some grief.
     
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  14. NotFromConcentrate

    NotFromConcentrate It’s a Cassowary :)

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    You’re sure this even applies to an opaque shape being put over the sensitive data?

    I know blurs can be reversed by “descrambling” the part that was “scrambled”. But if you block it out with something like what I did below over the word “fraudulently”, I can’t imagine you could get what was underneath, since to the best of my knowledge JPEG files don’t have layers to them that would make that object separable from the original image.

    [​IMG]
     
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  15. spdandpwr

    spdandpwr VIP Whale

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    That's terrible!!! You could pull the IP history of those that viewed that specific page to see who dun it!

    Either way, I'm sorry! It definitely makes you feel less "safe" on this board with people who share a mutual interest
     
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  16. queuetee

    queuetee VIP Whale

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    A simple trick to avoid problems. If you have a gift card that you use at a drive through----coffee or fast food for example, either write your initials on the card in a sharpie or put a sticker on it to identify it as yours. Once it is out of your sight, someone might be tempted to switch your card with one that is valueless.
     
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  17. NotFromConcentrate

    NotFromConcentrate It’s a Cassowary :)

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    This is in so many ways worth emphasizing. Initials, a sticker, anything. Not just with gift cards, but with payment cards in general.

    I'm not sure what it's like in other cities, but it's similar to a common scam with taxis here in Toronto, where taxi drivers will have a stash of debit cards from a few different banks... and when a passenger pays their fare with a debit card, the driver will swap the passenger's debit card with one of the cards from their stash, which is from the same bank (i.e. if the passenger is paying with a Royal Bank debit card, the driver will discreetly tuck away the passenger's card and switch it with a Royal Bank card from their stash without them noticing... so when they remove the card from the machine it will look enough like their card that they won't get suspicious).

    The customer will then enter their PIN into the driver's payment terminal, thinking they're making a payment. But it's actually a fake terminal that didn't process any payment, it just captured their PIN number. Usually what happens is the passenger will get out of the car with what they think is their card. But now the driver has both the passenger's original card AND their PIN number which they just entered into the machine. And you can figure out what happens from there...

    I'm part of a big Facebook group of Toronto millennials where we help each other out with heads-ups about various things... and in that group I hear story after story about how people have gotten their bank accounts cleaned out because of something like this with taxi drivers, and they only come to notice it when they realize they have somebody else's debit card in their wallet for some reason.

    I feel like this would be a lot easier to prevent if you had a unique identifier of some kind on your payment card... whether that may be a gift, debit, or credit card.
     
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  18. insin

    insin Speed Spender

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    Sadly, Yes. I think that's the case.
    An opaque physical object placed over sensitive data when taking the photo is probably the best choice.
    I've seen many people use a "business" card or post-it.

    Best / most timely thread!
     
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  19. dmr

    dmr Registered Abuser

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    I can say with close to 100% confidence that this is total ca-ca if the photo editor is used properly.

    If anyone disagrees, I will post an example and let anyone try to recover the blacked-out image.

    I am aware of cases (some highly publicized) where a TEXT editor (not photo) was used by an inexperienced user to obfuscate text and it was easily un-done. However, with a photo editor being used to set all pixels of a part of the image to a certain value, and saved in a common form, what was there originally is not recoverable, period!
     
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  20. fraygul

    fraygul Low-Roller

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    Sorry that happened to you. The feeling of being scammed would be worse for me than losing the money. It's just UGH.

    I don't worry too much about the people on here, but there's always lurkers. People hanging out. I lurk a lot lately though haha. My big thing is that if I went to Vegas and actually won something, I wouldn't post about it until I got home. A couple grand that I would just cycle back, no problem, but an actual jackpot, honestly, it freaks me out because we don't know exactly who sees it.

    Will the toronto millennial group let in a genXer in Saskatoon? I have not heard of that scam..
     
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