Even the Gift Card Industry has Scammers

And this handsome devil is one of them!



Here's what he did:

"A man reported to police that he purchased store gift cards for $1,000 from a man on Craigslist, but the cards had zero balances on them.
Officer Joseph Cox followed up with a local store and learned Beck bought the gift cards legally and then sold them to the victim, according to the police bureau.
After Beck sold them, he went back to the store and reported them stolen, police said, and the store immediately gave him new cards with original balances on them.
Because the cards sold to the man on Craigslist were reported as stolen, the victim couldn't use them, police said, and Beck was free to resell the new cards to others."

Read the rest of the article at Fox 12.

Just a fair warning, beware of who you do business with. In fact, rather than deal with what could be a shady character like the one above, if you want to buy discounted gift cards buy them from Mercardi.com.

Oh, and by the way, for those living in hot climates and are burning up from the heat, notice in the link above that the temperature in Portland, Oregon this morning is 54 degrees. That sounds heavenly, huh?

The Gift Card Business Has Scammers Too

It's a sad but true fact that every silver lining has a gray cloud, and for every good thing you find online there is almost always a dark side. It's also very true that whatever looks too good to be true usually is.

In that vein, I hope this post will save you time, trouble and heartache by bringing to your attention different online scams that have infested the gift card industry. I did some research after reading an article about the current gift card scam affecting Whole Food Market on Facebook, and lo and behold, I came up with almost 5 million hits on Google for the search term, "gift card scams."

Now that doesn't mean you should not participate in buying and selling gift cards, no how, no way! By and large, the gift card industry, which includes Mercardi.com, is super straight, reliable, dependable, and honorable. I just wanted to give you a head's up. It's like anything else online, or offline for that matter, before you dive in do your homework!