CINCINNATI — Here's an important reminder if you're planning to buy some gift cards this year. Those gift cards are also a favorite gift for criminals. Many gift cards these days are turning out to have been already drained.
Bill Sampson has a collection of unused gift cards.
"I got a Home Depot card off the rack all wrapped up in cardboard," he said.
But when he got home and opened the package, he noticed something. Someone had swapped the $100 Home Depot card with a worthless Amazon card.
"So somebody apparently is taking this off the shelf, slitting open the package, putting a dummy Amazon card which hasn't been activated," he said.
The same thing happened to Linda and Jamie Wince earlier this year with a Lowe's gift card. They said they went through the checkout, trying to use the card and discovered a penny was left on it.
Stores have taken extraordinary measures the past few years to make gift cards more secure against tampering, but if they're hanging on a rack and there's no cashier nearby, there's always a slight risk.
Kathy Stokes of the A\ARP says 21% of adults say they've given or received a gift card with no value possibly due to scammers.
"We know that scammers go into retail stores and they grab cards off of that big shiny rack," she said.
From there, crooks take pictures of the card getting information to use later,
"Cover it back up, put them back on the rack," Stokes said
AARP says to look for signs of gift card tampering, purchase electronic gift cards directly from the store's website or try to buy gift cards kept behind the counter.
Luckily, Sampson still had his receipt and was able to get a refund.
"I mean, if I put it in my Home Depot stash of cards, I would not use it for a year and then I would have probably really been out of the money," he said. "It would have been my loss."
So be sure to save every receipt with every gift card you buy.