Gift Card Scam Funnels Millions in Apple Devices Through New Hampshire Warehouses
At New Hampshire Public Radio, Todd Bookman writes:
New Hampshire appears to be the epicenter of a global criminal operation involving stolen gift cards, rented warehouses, and millions of dollars’ worth of Apple products, authorities say.
The scale of the scheme is mind-boggling: Apple, working with police, determined that the company shipped 46,364 products to a single warehouse in Windham, New Hampshire during a 10-week window last summer, with a total value of $47 million. That works out to an average of $600,000 a day in Apple products to a single location. A separate facility in Amherst received another $35 million in iPhones over the same period.
At what point does Apple stop offering gift cards because they enable too much harm?
Bookman’s dramatic story provides yet another reason to avoid physical gift cards. Thieves steal gift cards from retail store shelves, extract the card numbers and PINs, then return the cards to the racks. When an unsuspecting customer later buys and loads money onto the card, the thieves—monitoring remotely—immediately drain the funds and use them to purchase Apple products. Those products ship to warehouses in New Hampshire (chosen for its lack of sales tax), where workers repackage them for export overseas. It’s brilliantly evil.
The consequences for individuals who unknowingly purchase the tampered cards can also be severe. As I covered in “Compromised Apple Gift Card Saga Ends Well, but Risks Remain” (18 December 2025), attempting to redeem a compromised card can trigger Apple’s fraud-detection systems and lock you out of your Apple Account. My recommendation stands: avoid physical gift cards entirely, and if you must use one, redeem it at an Apple Store for physical merchandise rather than adding the balance to your Apple Account.
From what’s been reported, the issue seems to be happening with gift cards purchased at a retail outlet. Is this really an Apple Gift Card problem or a generic issue with retail gift cards?.
What if you purchase an Apple gift card directly from the online Apple Store? There wouldn’t be an opportunity for scanning a card before sale if you chose an e-delivery option. Or if you opt for a physical card via mail, one would think that Apple’s fulfillment would be a lot more secure than retail fulfillment.
It’s an issue with gift cards in general, but Apple gear commands a nice price on the black market. I assume this is also why Amazon cards are used for a lot of fraud.
I assume this is why most gift cards today are wrapped in sealed cardboard sleeves - much harder to open and reseal these. And why a lot of retailers near me keep them behind the counter.
I suspect your risk will also depend on where you live. I live in a small town in a rural part of the state. I assume my risk will be much lower than someone who lives in suburbia or a big city.
I agree with @Shamino — it’s a general problem, but because Apple gear is expensive and desirable, it makes Apple gift cards particularly easy to target. And the fact that using a tampered one can lock the user’s Apple Account makes it all the worse.
Probably? But I could imagine thieves going after gift cards higher up the distribution chain as well.
The digital gift cards are less problematic, though we’ve seen stories of them causing problems for the recipients as well.
Definitely scary! And it could “spread” to other companies’ gift cards. Probably best to avoid them, at least for now.
In other countries this is done different. There gift cards are useless pieces of cardboard/plastic until activated at the register upon payment. There are no codes on the card to steal, the code is bestowed onto the card upon purchase only (or rather you get it via the receipt and the receipt is actually of value, not the card itself). In that system you can still have fraud, but the thieves have to be part of the chain of the sale (retailer or retailer’s staff or IT person/intruder, etc. — essentially an insider), but the card itself is completely useless to any common thief or scammer that has not paid for the gift card in cold hard cash.
There was just a big article about a gift card scam in Australia.
I also saw that previously, but did not think much of it, given that it happened so far away. Well, looks like it has “hit home”! Thanks for posting that, Adam.
In this Australian case the redemption codes and the last three digits of the card number had been scratched off. I recently read an article (but can’t find the link now) about gift cards (I don’t remember the brand) that had been tampered with by very experienced people. After scratching off the covering over the hidden code, they glued on a new (different) code number that included a new scratch-off covering. Also, these cards had holograms that were designed to be damaged when the package was opened, but the bad actors replaced them with new counterfeit holograms after recording the numbers. To the casual observer everything looked normal. So, even if it has a hologram inspect it closely and be suspicious before buying.