One woman claims she lost hundreds of dollars after purchasing a Walmart gift card.
Susan Kuntz bought a $1,000 gift card at a Walmart in Houston, Texas, as a Christmas present for someone in need.
![Susan Kuntz lost hundreds of dollars to gift card fraud](https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2023/12/card-drained-we-need-money-865463275.png)
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![She bought $1,000 in gift cards, but someone was able to spend the money](https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2023/12/182-million-people-planning-shop-863581818-1.jpg)
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When she checked to see the balance on her cards, she found that some of them were already completely gone.
A total of three cards worth $800 were erased.
“I was the only one with the card, so the question was, ‘How could this happen?'” Kuntz told NBC affiliate KPRC.
“And if this is happening to us, who else has this happened to?”
Kuntz said he went back to the store where he bought the card to figure out why it was empty.
However, despite showing the receipt to the floor manager, she claimed she could not get her money back.
She even said staff were able to view surveillance footage of her transactions to prove she was the one making the purchases.
Kuntz said he plans to hand out cards to families in need at his church.
“If we didn’t know this, we would have given out cards to families,” Kuntz said.
“They would have filled their baskets with toys and food. They would go to the register and the card the church gave them would be empty. That would be terrible.”
“We have our money I’m back,” Kuntz added.
“We’re going to come up with something different for families. We’re going to give them money this Sunday. Of course we’re not going to give them Walmart cards.”
When Walmart did not refund her money, she filed a police report.
“They’re wondering if this is perhaps an inside job, or if it’s just a situation involving people figuring out how to get Walmart cards, so they can use them even though they don’t have them. I don’t know.’ They are,” Kuntz said.
“We don’t know. We don’t have the answers.”
“We are not alone in this problem,” she continued.
“So many people get cards at Christmas and try to buy things, but when they get to the register there is no money on the card.
“That’s a terrible thing. That’s a terrible thing to happen.”
Kuntz asked Walmart to remove the gift card until she knows what happened to her money to prevent others from losing money.
“They need to know what’s going on,” she told NBC affiliate KPRC.
“In the meantime, I personally would like to see all Walmart cards removed from cash registers so that no one else can use them.”
Similar scams are occurring in targeted locations in California.
Scammers altered the gift cards and put them on the shelf before they were discovered by an undercover operation.
Thousands of gift cards were tracked at more than 50 stores across the state.
This scam works by replacing the barcode on the gift card, so once the gift card is scanned and loaded with funds, the money is transferred to the scammer.
A warning has been issued to affected shoppers after ‘Bad Elf’ gift cards were spotted at more than 50 stores.
Walmart recently had to pay $4 million to customers who were victims of gift card fraud.
Walmart has introduced several innovative in-house technologies to prevent these scams.
Since 2018, its efforts have returned approximately $4 million to consumers.
Walmart has set up a dedicated hotline (888) 537-5503 for anyone who believes they may have been a victim of gift card scammers.
If you’ve been a victim of a scam, you can also report it to the Federal Trade Commission.
Walmart did not respond to US Sun’s request for comment at the time of publication.