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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/Armascout on 2023-06-20 17:59:10+00:00.
I work at a pharmacy as a cashier. Today a man who looked like he was in his 60s came in and bought an iTunes gift card.
Buying an iTunes gift card on its own is normal however he wanted 500 dollars on one iTunes gift card (the max amount possible) and 50 dollars on another iTunes gift card.
I immediately suspected he was a victim of a scam so I called my manager over who asked him “do you know the person you are buying the gift cards for?” The man responded “yes I do”.
My manager then completed the transaction but the register would not let her sell the man the 50 dollar gift card as well because it detected potential fraud.
My manager told the man that he would have to come back later to buy the 50 dollar gift card.
The man agreed and left with the 500 dollar gift card.
An hour later he came back and asked for a 50 dollar steam gift card. He then showed me his phone with a text conversation between him and someone else that went something like this.
Scammer: did you get the gift cards?
Old man: I got 500 but not the 50
Scammer: ok love ask if they have 50 dollar steam gift cards
Old man: ok dear.
I only saw his screen for a few seconds but that convinced me that he was being scammed.
I used my communicator to tell my manager that he was back and I was 100% sure he was being scammed. She responded to just sell him the gift card.
Thankfully one my coworkers (from here on I’ll refer to as CW) responded that she would deal with the man.
CW went over to the man who was looking at the gift cards. The man asked her if we had 50 dollar steam gift cards (thankfully we were out). Apparently he showed CW the text convo which caused her to refuse to sell him any gift cards.
Both me and CW told the man that he was very likely being scammed but he refused to believe it. Even after explaining that buying gift cards with unusually large balances is tactic used by scammers he refused to believe us.
The man then left and I assume he went to another store to get the card.
It’s been about 3 hours since then at the time of writing and I feel guilty for not being more vocal to my manager that he was likely being scammed and we shouldn’t sell him the 500 dollar gift card.
TLDR old guy was being taken advantage of and I wasn’t able to stop him from buying a 500 dollar iTunes gift card and wasn’t able to convince him that he was being scammed.
Wow. What a crappy store. Making $ over being good people.
OP: you tried, but look for another job. That store will put you under the bus if there’s a cent in it for them.
I also worked as a retail cashier for some time, I would phrase it as “are you aware of a common scam going around where a con artist will impersonate a loved one or claim a loved one is in trouble in an effort get them to send gift card codes over the phone”. If they are told is common they are more likely to understand that they’ve been had.
