Resealing “unopened” packages has gone to a whole new level with gift card scamming.
From NHPR:
The first step in the scheme is gift cards.
Here’s how investigators describe it: Chinese nationals go to retail stores – not just in New Hampshire, but around the country – and steal unopened gift cards for popular brands like Sephora and Lululemon off the shelves.
In a 2024 affidavit, Concord Detective Steven Carter explained what happens next: “The gift cards are then carefully removed from their packaging so that their card number, PIN number, and other identification can be recorded."
More quotes from Michael Tsai:
Then, according to Carter, the cards are carefully placed back in their original packaging, and are returned to the store’s shelves, where an unsuspecting customer will hopefully purchase them and add money to the card.
[…]
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.
[…]
Chinese nationals are working and, in some cases, living inside these rented warehouses. There, workers receive the new Apple products from UPS or FedEx, sometimes thousands a day. They unbox the products, then consolidate all of the electronics into larger, anonymous brown boxes.
[…]
Once the electronics are repackaged into unmarked boxes, the warehouse workers go to UPS or FedEx to ship them to their next destination. Often, that’s to an international exporter based in Florida. From there, it’s on to China, Dubai, or South America, where the iPhones and other devices are resold for profit.
This professional resealing of packages is how I almost got scammed out of an Apple Watch Ultra 2 last year. Thankfully I was able to record part of the unboxing to prove my innocence: