Tampered Gift Cards Sold in Australia’s Biggest Supermarkets, Investigation Finds
Shoppers in Australia are being caught in a gift-card scam that can wipe out hundreds of dollars in minutes. An ABC investigation has found tampered
Shoppers in Australia are being caught in a gift-card scam that can wipe out hundreds of dollars in minutes. An ABC investigation has found tampered cards on sale at the country’s biggest supermarket chains, with charges already laid over the problem.
A supermarket purchase that turned into panic
For Melbourne tech worker Lavkesh Arora, the trouble started with a plastic wrapper that felt “kind of funny” in his fingers. He had gone into Coles to buy Apple gift cards, drawn in by a supermarket promotion that offered extra FlyBuys points on the purchase.
He was trying to save money. Cost-of-living pressure made the deal hard to ignore, and he figured the packaging was sealed well enough. “I wanted to buy an Apple laptop,” he said.
Back home, Arora tore open the perforated cardboard packaging on five cards worth a total of $2,000. Then came the shock. One card worth $200 and another valued at $500 had missing digits and redemption codes scratched out.
Without those codes, he could not redeem the cards on Apple’s website. The discovery sent him into a panic.
A wider scam with serious stakes
The case has raised fresh questions about how tampered gift cards are making their way onto supermarket shelves. The ABC investigation said the cards were being sold by Australia’s largest supermarkets, and that the issue has now reached the point where charges have been laid.
Gift cards are meant to be a simple purchase. Pick one up, pay, use it later. But when the hidden codes are altered before the card reaches the checkout, the buyer can be left with nothing but unusable plastic and a costly dispute.
That makes the scam especially painful for people who use gift cards to stretch a budget. A promotion can make the purchase feel like a smart move. Then the loss lands all at once. Fast. Quietly.
For now, the immediate concern is shopper protection. The broader question is whether the tampering is connected to a criminal operation large enough to move through mainstream retail channels and into everyday baskets without being noticed.
Arora’s experience shows how ordinary the setup can look. A supermarket aisle. A familiar brand. A card bought in good faith. And then the missing numbers. “They were completely scratched out,” he said.
