White Rock woman scammed after unknowingly buying fraudulent gift cards

Christmas was nearly ruined for one woman in White Rock who says she was defrauded out of hundreds of dollars in gift cards.

Julia Benben was at the Shoppers Drug Mart near 152nd Street and 16th Avenue in early December where she says she bought six cards, as presents for loved ones. Each card was worth $100.

“I took them out of the packaging and … I sent them away, some of them were local, some of them went to Ontario.”

After the holiday, she found out three of them came back as invalid and were empty. She says there’s still another gift card that’s yet to be opened by the recipient, so it’s possible that one won’t work either.

“[My stepdaughter] scratched it and she sent a screenshot which said it wasn’t valid. And then I got another one from my other stepdaughter. And I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ That’s when the bells started ringing.”

Benben says she went back to the same Shoppers location and didn’t get any answers. She reached out via phone and email for a couple of weeks and still didn’t get anywhere. Then she realized the code on the cardboard attached to the card wasn’t the same as the one on the physical card itself.

“There is actually a piece that somebody has put inside and its barcode wasn’t the barcode on the gift card. So, what was happening was they were saying, ‘Give me the last four digits of the gift card.’ And I looked at the last four digits and it doesn’t match what’s on the receipt. How is that possible? It’s a pretty smart scam,” Benben told CityNews.

She suggests when you’re buying one, pull back the cardboard at the cash register to reveal the code on the actual card before it’s scanned.

“There needs to be a better system in place.”

Benben says, luckily, she kept all of her receipts and the activation documentation for the purchase, which she doesn’t normally do, and is telling others to do the same.

However, despite sending all of the documentation to Shoppers Drug Mart via email, Benben says she still wasn’t getting anywhere on a refund.

CityNews reached out to Loblaw for a response, and very soon after, it responded saying it had agreed to refund Benben $300.

Benben says the company initially wanted to refund her in points and after some back and forth, she was told she would get her money.

In a statement to CityNews, Loblaw admits gift card fraud is problematic for many retailers.

“Our store teams are trained to recognize fraud and do their best to intercept fraudulent cards wherever possible. That said, if a customer suspects they’ve been impacted by gift card fraud, they should reach out to customer care immediately so that we can take appropriate action.”