UPDATE: When Wegmans saw the News10NBC story, they called the victim, apologized and gave him a new $100 gift card.

Wes Bailey bought a $75 gift card at the East Rochester Wegmans for a relative but by the time it reached her three days later, the balance was only five cents.

This is known as “card draining” and when police from Boston to Sacramento made arrests in this scam recently, they recovered thousands and thousands of tampered gift cards.

If you’re buying a gift card for Christmas this weekend, get one from the customers service desk. They are less likely to be tampered with.

When Wegmans called Bailey, they said they are reviewing their gift card policies.

EAST ROCHESTER, N.Y. – A nationwide scam on gift cards is starting to happen here. The bad actors drain the gift cards of money so fast, it can happen before you leave the store where you bought it.

“Well, I was very disappointed,” said Wes Bailey from his home in East Rochester.

Bailey bought a $75 gift card from the East Rochester Wegmans and mailed it to a dear relative in Victor. When it arrived and she checked the balance, it was only .05 cents.

Brean: “So you bought it on December?”
Wes Bailey: “4th.”
Brean: “She got it on the 7th.”
Bailey: “Correct.”
Brean: “And the money was taken out when?”
Bailey: “On the 6th, the day before she received it, while it was in the mail.”

This is known as “card draining.”

Thieves steal thousands of gift cards and record the serial and pin numbers, then they put them back on the rack.

Amy Nofziger from AARP’s fraud watch network explains what happens next.

“Once a consumer loads money on that card, the criminal has a computer system algorithm set up to pin to them that money has been loaded on there,” she said. “They then drain those funds immediately off the card sometimes before the consumer has even left the store.”

Brean: “Is there something they should look for on the card?”
Nofziger: “What the criminals are looking for are the serial numbers and that pin number. So you can even take your finger and scratch that little silver pin number and see if it’s easily removed.”

Look at what happened outside Boston on Monday when police arrested two women in what police described in their report as a “trending scam” “plaguing retail stores.” Braintree Police found garbage bags full of more than 4,600 gift cards.

When Sacramento sheriff’s deputies arrested a man last week, they found him with 5,000 gift cards.

All the local police I contacted over the last two days told me they don’t have any active cases.

Brean: “Where did you buy it from? Was it off a rack like an impulse buy type thing or did it come from behind a counter?”
Wes Bailey: “It came off a rack out there at the end of one of the aisles.”

AARP says if you buy a gift card in a store, do it at the customer service desk. The cards are less likely to be tampered with.

Bailey has been hit twice. He checked the gift card his daughter got him for his birthday, and the balance was zero.

“So out of the three cards I’ve looked at here in the past week two of them have had no monies available.” he said.

Police say this crime is sophisticated and hard to detect. But if you buy a card from a store this weekend, run your fingers over the front and back and pay attention for anything that doesn’t feel right.

The safest option is to buy from the source like Target or Apple or Visa and have them send it directly to the person you’re buying it for.