A guy in the area regularly comes through the express lane or a self checkout and buys either one or two gift cards of $100 each. If he buys two cards, he will do two transactions. Otherwise, he'll just stick with the one.
Now, when someone spends $100+ on gift cards in one purchase, it will ask for us to check to see if their driver's licence matches the card they swiped and it prompts us to type in the driver's license number. Unless the guy is using sleight of hand (which is VERY possible on self checkout), he always appears to be using the same card to pay each time.
Now here's the sketchy part. Apparently, some guys a few months back were purchasing tons of gift cards with stolen credit cards. They would keep buying gift cards in one go until the credit cards started declining. I'm not sure if they got caught or anything, but I haven't heard anything about them in several months, so there's that. The regular $100 gift card guy above has never had his card declined for me though...or bought more than two cards in front of me.
Am I just being paranoid here?
-- Edited by WrongTender on Wednesday 19th of August 2015 02:15:20 AM
Does his card match his ID? If he is doing everything by Kroger policy there is nothing to worry about. I used to have a guy that would come in and buy cards with cash - $1,000 dollars each time. Then he would leave and come back in a few minutes and do it again. Then a few days later, here he came again. Drug money? Stolen? Don't know. I finally just got in the habit of calling a manager over to my register to "help me count" when he came in.
You could always act like the transaction won't go through and see how he reacts. Not put enough number in the dl or something.
He might be doing structured spending and trying to build rewards points on his card which I've seen. Back in Feb the law changed on the limits and payment methods. Gift cards must be done in one transaction now. If it's over $2000 including fees it has to go to the service desk and only cash or check can be taken.
As for the others using stolen credit cards we see that on a regular basis in Atlanta stores. Often they'll do $75 increments to avoid ID checks and work in pairs or teams to distract the attendant and try to do multiple transactions. Usually they hit self checkout but when they know there's been a bunch of new hires, they'll hit check lanes and when the cards don't work they'll say they'll be back with cash and never are.
