[whoknew1122]

Lots of lower income areas have places (some of which are legit, most of them not) that will purchase gift cards for 50 cents on the dollar or less. The idea is that someone might gift you a giftcard to, say, Home Depot, but you need food rather than lumber. So you sell the gift card to a broker at a steep discount and pocket the money.

But this also a good way to launder money, most often for low-level drug transactions. Drug addicts steal credit cards or pass bad checks to buy gift cards. Then either give the cards to a dealer directly, or to a broker. The broker gives them cash, which they take to the dealer.

[0goel0]

That's not money laundering. The gift card in that scenario is still "dirty".

[whoknew1122]

Functionally, the gift card is clean as long as it continues to be valid. And most of them do. The user of the gift card isn't the purchaser, so they can use it without (much) fear.

People can also abuse return policies. Most places will give you a gift card if you return unused merchandise without a receipt. So people will shoplift small, high-value items from one store and return them to another. Get a gift card, and then sell the gift card. The cash isn't traceable, and the broker gets a tidy profit.

[thebean11]

> Most places will give you a gift card if you return unused merchandise without a receipt.

Usually only if you paid with a credit card, so there's a record you made the purchase no?

[whoknew1122]

That hasn't been my experience. Policies may have changed, although I'm not sure how they'd know if purchased something using a credit card if you don't have your receipt.

Most places typically will provide the refund if you have the merchandise and an ID. The ID helps loss prevent determine if someone's returning an abnormally large amount of goods, but there's no shortage of mules for this kind of scam.

I'm not in the loss prevention field (anymore), and my knowledge of these sorts of scams is a few years old.

[thaumasiotes]

>> Most places will give you a gift card if you return unused merchandise without a receipt.

> Usually only if you paid with a credit card, so there's a record you made the purchase no?

This makes absolutely no sense. If the store demands that it demonstrate to you that it knows you made the purchase, before it will allow a return, then you can easily demand to be refunded in cash. What purpose would the receipt serve?

[dragonwriter]

> Usually only if you paid with a credit card, so there’s a record you made the purchase no?

No. Usually, if you can prove that you made the purchase at the store, by any acceptable means, they will refund you (for credit card purchases, usually exclusively to the card used for the purchase).

If you can’t, but they let you return anyway, they’ll typically give you store credit (if they don’t issue gift cards) or a gift card, so that the “money” you get ultimately is going to be spent at the store (or not at all.)