How do gift card scammers stay under cover?

[thewannacryguy]

We're sometimes warned that your country's authorities will never accept payments by gift cards. This is because scammers make up fake debts and demand to be paid by gift cards. I've never understood this. Surely if the victim shows the gift card numbers to local authorities, authorities can then ask the relevant website or service to track whoever uses that specific gift card. I don't understand how the scammers undetected and keep the funds from the gift card.

 

[Seriel]

You can sell the gift cards (Or just the codes on them) for slightly less than their actual value on places like ebay and etc. (Or websites specifically designed for this)
People who want cheap funds for their consoles/etc buy them, while the scammer gets to pocket the majority of the value of them.

 

[godreborn]

people have been doing that since at least the 360. I actually bought several. I read that the codes were from a stolen truck carrying them. I would go to ebay to get a card for the switch for slightly less, but I'm afraid that I'll get banned like the codes have been blacklisted. I'm trying to keep my system as stock as possible.

 

[ThoD]

Actually, the cases @Seriel mentioned are only a tiny portion, scammers use gift cards as payment because gift cards ARE untraceable, no company logs their gift cards, only logs whether the code has been used, not by who, when, etc., so you can't even undo the transaction. Most often it's Apple gift cards they ask because they can then flip them for phones to sell at a markup to idiots, effectively laundering the gift card scam money, then laundering the cash from that sale through sites that let them (eg: g2a).

 

[JuanMena]

I don't know.
Have you tried asking?

Are you here to sell me shared times?

 

[Seriel]

Actually, the cases @Seriel mentioned are only a tiny portion, scammers use gift cards as payment because gift cards ARE untraceable, no company logs their gift cards, only logs whether the code has been used, not by who, when, etc., so you can't even undo the transaction. Most often it's Apple gift cards they ask because they can then flip them for phones to sell at a markup to idiots, effectively laundering the gift card scam money, then laundering the cash from that sale through sites that let them (eg: g2a).

Yeah that's fair enough, I was just mentioning the first idea I could think of.

 

[Quantumcat]

The scammers do not want to use the gift cards, they just want something easy to sell. If they asked for a bank transfer of money THAT would be very traceable.