{"id":685324,"date":"2026-05-22T01:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T01:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/685324\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T01:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T01:06:09","slug":"ontario-gift-card-scam-2-arrested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/685324\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario gift card scam: 2 arrested"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Two men have been arrested in connection with what police say was a \u201csophisticated gift card scam\u201d at multiple stores across southern Ontario.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Halton Regional Police said their investigation began in Dec. 2025 when they received a report about a suspected fraud at a Walmart store in Burlington.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">During the investigation, officers saw a man remove gift cards from his pockets and place them on a display rack, police said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">After that, the man then allegedly selected additional gift cards, concealed them and exited the store without activating or purchasing them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThe scheme involved fraudulently placing compromised gift cards onto retail display racks and later monitoring the cards for activation by unsuspecting customers. Once funds were loaded onto the cards at purchase, the suspect redeemed the balances to obtain goods and other items of value before the legitimate purchaser could use them,\u201d police said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haltonpolice.ca\/news-releases\/posts\/project-reload-uncovers-sophisticated-gift-card-scam\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.haltonpolice.ca\/news-releases\/posts\/project-reload-uncovers-sophisticated-gift-card-scam\/\">in a news release on Thursday.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">As a result, police launched \u201cProject Reload\u201d to look into the man\u2019s involvement in a \u201csophisticated and organized gift card fraud scheme operating across multiple jurisdictions throughout Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Investigators identified similar incidents in Halton, Hamilton, Brantford, Niagara, Toronto, Peel, Guelph, York, Barrie and Kitchener-Waterloo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Police said their surveillance found that the man was \u201cactively and systematically\u201d placing gift cards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cDuring the course of the investigation, investigators seized a quantity of these gift cards and, for evidentiary purposes, loaded them with varying monetary values,\u201d police said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">They later confirmed that the funds had been redeemed and that the suspect used them to make purchases.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Investigators executed three search warrants in Mississauga earlier this month, resulting in the arrest of two suspects.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">They have been identified as 48-year-old Giorgi Khandolishvili and 40-year-old Jevgenij Pikunov.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Both have been charged with fraud over $5,000, fraud under $5,000, possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000, possession of property obtained by crime under $5,000, possession of a forged document with intent and forgery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The search also led to the seizure of several items, including 5,700 prepaid gift cards with discernible values with a total at-risk loss over $1 million, 137 bottles of alcohol valued over $11,000, 487 Belmont cigarette packs valued over $8,000, a 2012 BMW X3, high-end watches, jewelry, sunglasses, a card-making instrument and other tools to tamper with gift cards and a card printer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Police said they also confiscated pellet rifles, a pellet gun, and a pellet pistol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two men have been arrested in connection with what police say was a \u201csophisticated gift card scam\u201d at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[712,49,48,44],"class_list":["post-685324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}