Fraud with Apple gift cards: gangs from China busted in northern Europe
Hundreds of voucher cards for Apple products bought with stolen credit cards: Several Chinese crooks have been caught in supermarkets in Scandinavia.
Apple gift cards, here in America: a currency for all Apple products, digital and physical.
(Image: Shutterstock/Jonathan Weiss)
According to a report by the Norwegian broadcaster NRK, several Chinese citizens have been convicted in the country of using stolen credit cards to purchase numerous Apple gift cards. These appear to be organized gangs with lists of supermarkets in smaller and larger Norwegian towns. They move from store to store and then purchase the cards at self-service checkouts. One of those caught is said to have purchased 126 Apple gift cards in just one day.
119 voucher cards in one day
The fraudsters operate remotely and are connected to their Chinese clients, whom they are said to have contacted via social networks, by mobile phone. They then use phishing attacks, mainly in Europe and the USA, to transfer fraudulent credit card details to their Android devices, which they then use to pay. They then send photos of the activated Apple gift cards to their clients. In return, they receive large sums of money, in some cases over 3000 euros for a day's work visiting seven supermarkets and 119 Apple gift cards, writes NRK.
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Apple gift cards are considered attractive to criminals for several reasons: they are suitable for purchasing digital and physical goods from the company (App Store and Apple Store), they are widely used and can therefore be quickly turned into money, and they appear to be difficult to trace and are therefore suitable for this form of money laundering. The latter in particular is confusing: it should at least be possible to link the (stolen) credit card to an Apple voucher code to block it. Whether this happens in practice (and how often) remains unclear.
Cards stolen, then stored in Apple Pay or Google Pay
According to NRK, the cards are transferred to the gang members' cell phones via special software that runs on Android devices. The cards themselves appear to be created after phishing using Apple Pay or Google Pay. The fraudsters particularly like to use Norwegian cards because these can usually be verified via SMS, which the phishing victims often do themselves because they think they are confirming a correct payment, NRK writes in another report.
Apple has not yet commented on the incidents. In Norway, at least two people from China have been sentenced, one to seven months in prison for money laundering and another to a fine, which was then paid after the threat of prison. Both people were deported. However, at least three other gang members were not caught. There is apparently a high number of unreported cases.
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