CHARLOTTE — Teresa Johnson is a teacher assistant. She likes educating others, including consumers, not just elementary students.
She bought a Green Dot card for $20 and put $400 on it for gifts. “That way there’s no going over budget,” she told Action 9 attorney Jason Stoogenke.
They went to use it, but say it wasn’t working. “$400 to me is a lot of money,” she said. “Don’t go messing with my money.”
So her husband checked the balance. “He was like there’s only $100 on the card,” she said. She says she went to the Green Dot app and saw someone had used the card with PayPal somehow. “So I called PayPal,” she said. “They could see it. They could see everything on the Green Dot card. The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
>>CLICK HERE for more Action 9 reports
She’s not sure how somebody was able to meddle with her card, but “PayPal got our money back within 24 hours… our money was back on the card.”
“I was extremely happy. Very very happy,” she said.
Johnson says they still went over their budget, even with the card. But that was a different problem.
“We can confirm that fraud continues to be increasingly sophisticated and prevalent across our industry. We invest heavily in technology and talent to help us identify and prevent fraud, and we partner with other financial institutions and the government to identify and combat suspicious activity. We also encourage consumers to stay vigilant in protecting themselves. To help with this, we provide resources in our Help Center https://www.greendot.com/helpcenter including tips to safeguard customers and their accounts against fraud. With gift cards, it’s important to check that the card has not been tampered with before purchasing, and to never allow others to access the card or account information,” Green Dot emailed Action 9.
Likewise, Stoogenke says the key is to avoiding thieves draining your gift card -- any brand -- in the first place:
- Don’t grab a card from the front of the rack. Get one from the back.
- Check the packaging: make sure it doesn’t look like someone tampered with it.
- You may want to buy gift cards online or just give cash instead.