INVER GROVE HEIGHTS, Minn — Heads up if you're buying gift cards anytime soon. The Inver Grove Heights Police Department is warning of a new gift card scam – and it's difficult to detect.
"It's a really, really big deal," Matt Mattson, an investigator at the department, said.
IGH police arrested two people Friday after they were caught putting gift cards onto store shelves at a Cub Foods. They were charged with felonies, which could carry over a year in jail or thousands of dollars in fines.
Those gift cards were scams, meant to steal money once activated.
"This is relatively new, and especially on a scale like this is new," Mattson said. "This is not something that we're super familiar with. We've seen it maybe once or twice, but again, on this scale, nothing like this."
Those two people were caught with nearly 100 pounds of gift cards. Mattson estimates that in one box, there were roughly 2,000 cards.
"This is hundreds of thousands of police reports that are avoided here," he said. "And hundreds, if not thousands, of victims that won't be victims."
Here's how it works – thieves get these cards in bulk. They remove the scratch off section on the cards after carefully removing it from it's packaging, copy the number underneath and then scratch off some numbers so the card won't work.
"They take a new sticker and put it on with this one, the only way to tell that something is amiss is if you run your finger across it, there's a little bit of grit under this one that wouldn't be from the factory, and this one is completely smooth," Mattson said, showing us some of the affected cards.
It's a big concern with graduation season in full swing. According to the Better Business Bureau, these types of scams are becoming more common, especially this time of year.
They recommend purchasing directly from a retailer, rather from a gift card kiosk, to ensure a card is safe. They also recommend fully checking the packaging on a card.
Mattson says if you see a card that looks tampered with, tell the store.
"If you have $200 set aside as a gift for somebody, and you lose that $200, that's a huge hit to someone's family, to someone's loved one," he said. "It's a tragedy every time it happens."
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