By Richard Deppe
RDeppe@Cherryroad.com

Gift card scammers have hit the Uintah Basin once again. A close call at the local Lowe’s store put everyone on high alert. Many times, these people will go through the self-checkout lines which is where they were caught by an assistant manager.

Authorities were first notified of these incidents after another store was taken for over 2,000 dollars.

Previously to Vernal; this group of men hit stores in multiple larger Utah cities. Each time there appears to be a different tactic used. Most of the time they will take many cards to the self-checkout registers, ring them up, then scan multiple fake payment cards on their cellphones.

This group of people try through registers as well taking them up to the register, having them scanned, they then pull out what appears to be a debit card telling the cashier it is a “cash card” that needs to be processed as cash. The drawer will open and activate all the gift cards. They will then leave with thousands of dollars of gift cards.

I spoke to the manager who caught one of these people Terry Harward

“I was checking out before leaving work when I noticed this gentleman with a handful of cards acting suspicious. As he walks up to self-checkout, I alert him that unfortunately we are unable to process gift cards on our self-checkout registers and that they would need to go through our customer service area in which he then dropped the cards and briskly walked away,” said Terry Harward.

This is not the first time there have been attempts at stores throughout the Basin and it will not be the last. There have reports of these men previously hitting Ogden, Salt Lake, Orem, and St. George stores just in the past few weeks.

Previously working in retail, two years prior to this I have seen and dealt with multiple gift card scam attempts. Just last year I came across two different attempts as well to customers buy hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars in cards to give to someone over the phone or computer out of fear.

It may not seem like something like this could happen to you, but it can happen to anyone. Stores are cautioned to talk with customers buying large quantities of gift cards about who or where they are going to.