It's the same holiday gift card fraud problem that's appeared over the past few years.
Evidently, fraudsters go into local retailers, lift a number of gift cards without paying for them and walk out. somehow, they open the card envelopes (possibly a heat-activated glue was used when the gift card package was assembled), open up the enclosure and remove the gift card. They then copy down all the data from the back of the gift card, remove the silver "security strip", if the card has one, and copy down the activation code, scratch off the last digits of the activation code , put the card back in the original two-part envelope and "reseal" it - again, possibly using some sort of heat-activated glue and return the batch of cards to a retailer's display.
They then wait for someone to purchase that/those particular cards by pinging the card number via software every so often. the the unsuspecting buyer - in this case you - purchases a card for whatever amount, the thieves can then access that denomination through that particular card's web site.
This happens every holiday season with Apple, Home Depot, Lowe, Amazon and a bunch of other mega-retailers who offer gift cards. I've had two in the past three weeks (both Amazon) that came up altered when I opened them.
Don't think you're the only one that got caught up in this scam. It runs into the tens of millions of fraudulent purchases annually.
What you DO want to do is, if you purchase a gift card for personal or gift use, while in whatever retailer's store your purchasing cards through, actually open up the card's "tear strip" to see if the silver security stripe is intact and take a look at the cards activation code to see if the last digits have been scratched off. If they have been, then the card's definitely been scammed. Bring it to the store manager's attention immediately so that they can pull the cards on their racks and break out a new supply.
Some retailers even go so far as to pull the most likely ticketed cards off the racks and put up notices that if you want one of the cards from this retailer, to go to the store's customer service desk to make the purchase.
Don't feel bad. Whomever is involved in this type of fraud is very, very good at what they're doing. The opening and re-sealing of the card is, for all intents and purposes, unnoticeable. 99% of purchasers would never suspect a thing.
