{"id":61815,"date":"2023-12-21T10:58:41","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T18:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=61815"},"modified":"2023-12-21T10:58:41","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T18:58:41","slug":"hahn-calls-on-retailers-to-protect-consumers-from-gift-card-draining-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=61815","title":{"rendered":"Hahn Calls on Retailers to Protect Consumers from Gift Card Draining Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>San Pedro, CA December 21, 2023<\/strong>\u2013 This morning, Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn held a press conference calling on retailers to better protect consumers from a growing gift card scam problem amid holiday shopping. Just last week, Supervisor Hahn bought a Vanilla gift card at a CVS for her nephew\u2019s birthday that was drained before he could use it. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cI am fortunate,\u201d said Supervisor Hahn. \u201cWhat I lost on this gift card I was easily able to repay in cash to my nephew.\u00a0 But I am worried about the people who are barely scraping by who can\u2019t afford to be ripped off.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The scam, known as \u201cgift card draining,\u201d works two ways. \u00a0In the first instance, scammers attach a barcode from a card they already have to an unsold gift card in a store. When someone buys the tampered card and loads money onto it, they are loading money onto the scammer\u2019s card. \u00a0In the second instance, a scammer would steal the details off a legitimate gift card and then place it back on a store rack. That scammer can then track when the card is bought and loaded and then quickly drain the money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cI am calling on retailers like CVS, Target, Walgreens and others, to take immediate steps to protect their own shoppers from these scams,\u201d said Supervisor Janice Hahn. \u201cIt should not be up to consumers to defend themselves from scams when you have the power to prevent them all together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">She is calling on retailers to place gift cards behind glass or behind a service desk while scams continue, better train check out clerks to recognize fake barcodes placed on cards, or add warning signage on gift card displays.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>San Pedro, CA December 21, 2023\u2013&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61816,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61815\/revisions\/61816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}