gift card tampering ring<\/a>. <\/p>\nJeff Roberts, intelligence operations captain with the Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center, said gift card scams are a nationwide issue. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese are organized criminal groups that are doing nothing but this, and it\u2019s costing billions,\u201d Roberts said. <\/p>\n
The FCIC says through gift card draining, criminals track cards that they\u2019ve tampered with and put back, then they drain the balance electronically once someone buys and loads them. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey meticulously take them apart, gather the important information that\u2019s off the card like the card number and the pin, and they log that,\u201d Roberts added. <\/p>\n
Paying attention to the way the gift card appears, Roberts said, is key to not falling victim to scams. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese suspects do a really good job of methodically putting them back together,\u201d Roberts mentioned. \u201cEven check the balance with the store after purchase to make sure it\u2019s still good.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mechele Mills, president and chief executive officer of Better Business Bureau East Texas, said in many cases shoppers who get scammed do not get their money back. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s best if you can purchase from a place that actually has these cards either really close to the cash register so they\u2019re monitored a lot more closely, or if they\u2019re in a covered display, or if they just keep these cards behind the counter because they\u2019re less likely to have been tampered with.\u201d <\/p>\n
The FCIC said consumers who see suspicious gift cards should report it to the retailer and law enforcement. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KLTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TYLER, Texas (KLTV) – Experts are advising consumers to be careful when buying gift cards heading into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[151868,8374,36097,39127,10826,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-438275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-financial-scam","tag-fraud","tag-gift-cards","tag-organized-crime","tag-scheme","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}