While this story has little relevance for gift card consumers, it is just too ridiculous to ignore.
Earlier this month, a man called a 24-hour Wal-Mart in Columbus, Ohio, at 1 AM and told an associate he was with Wal-Mart’s IT department. The caller instructed the associate to activate gift cards, read him those card numbers and then scratch off the tape on the back of the cards so she could tell him the authorization codes, police said. And the associate obliged. Hours—and more than $11,000 in online fraud—later, the store realized it had been had.
Why would an associate even activate a giftcard without some form of payment from the buyer (customer)first? What is the “IT” department? When dealing with anyone who says they’re from a “specialized” division of WalMart & they are making demands of an associate to do something over the phone concerning money aren’t the associates required to retain some form of verification? This doesn’t even make sense, was the associate a party in the scam or just untrained?