Gift card fraud: To whom to report? How to recover funds? Is the party which issued me the card liable?
Citibank just sent me a $100 check. Here's how I got it: Question 1: Who do I report such fraud to? Walmart, or their card processor. They may be in their right to require the original purchaser to do the report. Generally, credit card and debit card fraud must be reported to the bank within 60 days of the statement for them to take responsibility. I don't see why gift cards would be different. You can also report it to the police, but I believe you'll be asked to file a report in the jurisdiction where the card was used. Again - time is of the essence, and there's nothing much they could do with your report now. Question 2: How can I recover the $100 value of my Walmart gift card? At this point, 2.5 years later when the card was used to buy prepaid cards, there's no way to catch the thief and recover the funds. Had you reported it promptly, Wlamart could have block the prepaid cards sold or track their usage, but now is too late. Question 3: Is Citibank in any way liable? (The gift card was   fraudulently used shortly after---within the same month---I received   it from Citibank.) I doubt it unless you can show a pattern. It could be someone working for the Citibank, someone working for the USPS, or someone just stole a bunch of numbers and waited until they became activated. Have you checked to see if anything else went missing? Walmart says that because I was not the original purchaser of the gift   card, they could not help me directly Just to build on what @littleadv already gave you, my personal experience on this is that none of the companies that you'll likely be dealing with in a situation like this will be falling over themselves to help you out. Unless it also helps them for some reason, or if they're compelled by consumer laws.  If you think you should be protected from this sort of thing happening, feel free to reference the FCRA to see if you might get any consumer protections.  But just from what you've said here, it doesn't sound like you do. So if anything else went missing (or even if not), it might have been someone working for Citi, who may have had access to more of your personal information than just your card.  ID theft is unfortunately common, as a fairly easy crime to commit, a hard one to protect yourself against, and a very hard one to prosecute.  When did you last check your credit report?
Typically you can not buy gift cards with gift cards but in most stores this is a function built into the cash register, I find it hard to believe that targets system would not restrict it if it was in fact against their policy.  I worked for Home Depot for 5 years, they have a strict gift card/store credit policy that prevents such things from happening. Go to the police. This is fraud and is illegal. Sure, this will hurt your friend but better now then when he starts abusing of his position to fraud even more people... Original comment by Bakuriu sorry for not giving credit In addition to what has been said, gift cards with a credit card logo (which is what I am assuming you mean here) do not have an address associated with them. That means that if you try to use one at a merchant that users address verification (common in online purchases), the transaction will fail.  In my experience with an American Express branded gift card, I was able to call the number on the back and they added an address to the card so that it would work. It seemed like this was a common and well known issue.  Because the gift card is not associated with any person, no verification is needed to add that address, you can give them any address you want.  Also I believe that the card numbers in use for gift cards are specific, that is you could tell that a card is a gift card based on the number alone. That means it is likely possible for a merchant to reject those gift cards while still accepting other cards from that network.  This is likely for certain transactions. For example,  a hotel or car rental agency requires a credit card for incidentals, and it's likely that the system itself will outright reject a gift card even if it has enough on it for the initial hold.  As for debit cards, I think there are far fewer issues with acceptance, other than the aforementioned hold issues described in another answer. I accidentally bought gems on Clash of Clans due to the finger print id, and I bought it on an american express gift card. But when I remembered I used up the gift card until it was at $0 and I still got the gems? Do I tell apple or what? Also could the gift card be overdrafted? I'm guessing you're in the US? If so, yes, you can be prosecuted, but it's unlikely.  Fraud crimes are up to a prosecutor to pursue, there are a lot of fraud cases and bystanders take low priority, I'm assuming you're passively complicit, not actively.  If this is the case it's best to work with the bank to get your situation cleaned up and move on.  These days, most banks have dealt with wire fraud at least once, and they're familiar with cashiers check fraud.   A fair warning, the bank will report you, if they think you're involved, so if you are not a complete bystander, you may want to lawyer up.  So hopefully you didn't try to spend any of the fraudulent money and hopefully you have proof of a third party, because they will want a connection to that person (name/number/other) to file their report. The credit card company isn't the one losing money here. It's the airline. The airline credited you back twice (once with the fraud report, once with the credit from the thief). Maybe you should call them if you want it resolved sooner. In any case, if/when they do come looking for their money, they will have the paperwork to prove that it belongs to them.  You can spend the money now and risk paying it back later, you can watch and wait, or you can be proactive and ask the airline to fix it. They may or may not care about that sum. "You should immediately tell your bank you've been scammed, request for the transactions' cancellation or revocation and get back most - if not all - of the money transferred. I've placed numerous orders online in the past and was always very careful about their trace-ability but I have to admit once I acted carelessly and got scammed. I didn't think of it much before placing an order for a very low priced laptop through a private seller on Amazon. I'd never purchased anything this way before but thought ""Amazon will protect me if anything goes wrong..."" so I sent an e-mail to the seller. He gave me his bank details (with Spanish IBAN) via a non-suspicious e-mail with the usual logos and e-mail address domain name, made the payment and guy came back to me saying he'll ship the laptop once he sees the funds received. Waited max. 2 days, trying to contact him but no response. Contacted Amazon giving the seller's ID and the ""transaction""'s ID I'd received from him and they told me there's nothing they can do as that transaction is not recorded on their systems. Immediately after realizing I've been scammed and done my goof, I contacted my bank via e-mail explaining the situation. I was informed that the transaction can be cancelled but they cannot guarantee the return of the entire amount. After 2-3 days, I saw my balance richer by €950 and the payment I'd made to the scum was €1,000. I'd highly recommend that you check the fraud protection policy of your bank and in case there's something that can be done, then just get in contact with them explaining the situation." "As far as the banker himself goes, it's a customer service issue.  WF is not going to tell you about their internal discipline (or oughtn't, anyway), other than potentially to confirm that the banker does or does not still work there; that's the closest they should get to telling you about it.  I'm a (very) former retail manager, and that's absolutely the most I'd ever do in a case like this; and trust me, even with good customer service reps, you get requests to fire someone a lot, sometimes valid, sometimes not. You did the correct thing from your end: you brought the issue to their attention.  Despite the quota, it's (hopefully) not permitted to sign people up without their permission (since that's illegal!), and I can say that in my retail experience, with these promotions with great incentive to cheat in this manner, one of the main things our loss prevention department did was to monitor data to see if people were illicitly signing people up for cards or otherwise cheating the system.  That could be a very bad thing from a customer service point of view and from a legal point of view. What you should have done (or possibly did, but it's not clear in your post) is, after you reported the issue, asked for a re-contact on a particular date in the future - not ""after you've looked into it"", but ""Next friday I would like to get a call from you to discuss the resolution.""  Again, they're not going to tell you the discipline, but they should tell you at least that they've investigated it and will make sure it doesn't happen again, or similar.  It's possible they will want more information from you at this point, and this is a useful way to make sure that request doesn't fall off of their plate.  They should be able to, at least, tell you if there was a perceived issue on their end - it might be something meaningless to you, like ""He thought you said to sign up"", or something more descriptive, like ""He pushed the button to send you a notice, but our computer system screwed that up and made it an application"".  You never know these days how easy it is to screw these things up. Now, they certainly should have fixed the issues on your end.  Hopefully they did whatever you needed them to do banking-wise, or else you withdrew your money and went somewhere else.  If not, follow up with that supervisor's supervisor, or go up a level or two to a regional director or equivalent.  They may not be able to cancel the card for you, but the other banking-related things they certainly should fix.  The card you probably just have to cancel and be done with. As far as the misuse of personal information, one thing I'd consider doing is placing a freeze on your credit report.  Then this could never have happened - you would have to lift it to have your report pulled to be given the card.  This is not free, though, so consider this before doing this." If possible, I would disable online payment on the card, immediately (reduce the limit of online payment to zero). I think you should also demand the photocopy back, immediately. It is tad confrontational, and maybe he did get it without any ill will, but even in this case, he should be made aware of the fact that this is wrong. Note that if he genuinely did it with ill will, he will have likely made multiple copies (who knows how many), so it will not really protect you from fraud (in this case). Then you should call or e-mail the card company (and/or your bank) and tell them what happened. I think they would consider the card stolen and maybe advise you on what you should do next. Note that if he uses the card, you might (and should) try to chargeback the money (through the card company), but it might be argued that you did not sufficiently protect the details of your card. And even if you succeed, the process can be long and you will not have access to your money in the meantime (this is one of the downsides of a debit card vs credit card...). You may also consider moving away the money from the associated bank account (so that there's not much to steal). Of course, the situation (on that front) gets more complicated if account overdrawing is enabled in your account. But this isn't cash though, its credit card. They'll just chargeback and we have to now report it to the police for stolen items. But we followed the general procedure, and the thieves had the pin of the CC which is why I'm a bit confused. Now we still have to verify the signature, but if the signature ends up being right should we get the money back? Because at this point the CC holder should be a lot more responsible about the CC and other people shouldn't know their PIN. If anything the signature is understandable cause you can just forge it since its in the back of the card. "You're right about your suspicions. I'm not a professional (I suggest you talk to a real one, a one with CPA, EA or Attorney credentials and license in your State), but I would be very cautious in this case. The IRS will look at all the facts and circumstances to make a claim, but my guess would be that the initial claim would be for this to be taxable income for your husband. He'd have to prove it to be otherwise. It does seem to be related to his performance, and I doubt that had they not known him through his employment, they'd give him such a gift. I may be wrong. So may be an IRS Revenue Officer. But I'd bet he'd think the same. Did they give ""gifts"" like that to anyone else? If they did - was it to other employees or they gave similar gifts to all their friends and family? Did those who gave your husband a gift file a gift tax return? Had they paid the gift tax? Were they principles in the partnership or they were limited partners (i.e.: not the ones with authority to make any decision)? Was your husband instrumental in making their extraordinary profit, or his job was not related to the profits these people made? These questions are inquiring about the facts and circumstances of the transaction. Based on what he can find out, and other potential information, your husband will have to decide whether he can reasonably claim that it was a gift. Beware: unreasonable claims lead to equally unreasonable penalties and charges. IRS and your State will definitely want to know more about this transaction, its not an amount to slide under the radar. This is not a matter where you can rely on a free opinions written by amateurs who don't know the whole story. You (or, rather, your husband) are highly encouraged to hire a paid professional - a CPA, EA (enrolled agent) or tax attorney with enough experience in fighting gift vs income characterization issues against the IRS (and the State, don't forget your State). An experienced professional may be able to identify something in the facts and the circumstances of the situation that would lead to reducing the tax bill or shifting it to the partners, but it is not something you do on your own." "This is a very trivial scam. Flow is like this: Send money to Mr. X (you, in this case). Call Mr. X and ask for the money back, because mistake. Usually they ask for a wire transfer/cash/gift cards/prepaid cards or something else irreversible/untraceable. Mr. X initiates transfer back to Scammer. Accept the transfer from Mr. X Dispute the original transfer or otherwise cancel it through the netbank Mr. X cannot dispute his transfer to the Scammer, since it was genuinely and intentionally initiated by Mr. X. End up with twice the money, at the expense of Mr. X In other countries this is usually done with forged checks, but transfers can work just as well. As long as the transfer can be retroactively canceled or reversed - the scam works. You mentioned money laundering - this is definitely a possibility as well. They transfer dirty money to you from unidentified sources, and you send a ""gift"" to them with a clear paper trail. When the audit comes - the only proof is that you actually sent them the gift, and no-one will believe your story. You'll have to explain why the Mr. Z who's now in jail sent you a $1K of his drug money. However, in this case I think it is more likely a scam, and the scammer didn't really know what he was doing..." Do they even know how to find these people, short of using facial recognition or somesuch wizardry?  I mean I'm assuming they paid for the gift cards with cash.  Do you have to provide identifying information to activate them? "Actually, you started the crime before ""doing [the] mutually volunteer transactions"".  You started by violating the terms of the contract which are clearly stated on the coupon: 1 offer per household and no reproduction.  You used the same coupon over and over again.  That may not be a criminal offense, but the company could still find you liable for it.  It's what happens after you do the initial defrauding that'll get you in the biggest trouble." For about six months now, every 3-4 weeks, I get a misdelivered packaged from those idiots.  It's to the same person.  They have the same house number, Asian name like myself, but ten streets away.  First couple of times I reported this to Amazon, but I got real tired of spending my own time to help fix their problem. I figure let Amazon keep sending replacement packages and maybe they'll finally get the hint.  Meanwhile, my housekeepers have been enjoying these gifts.