Sephora Gift Card Scam

[ScamVictim289]

I've been trying to resolve this since 11/29 and predictably Sephora is doing everything they can to get me to give up a recovering the money that was stolen from me. 

I was a victim of a common scam on 10/11/24. I was directed by my new boss whom I had not yet met to purchase some Gift Cards. In an effort to please my new boss, I swiftly complied and was not careful to check the finer points of the e-mail address contacting me. I went to the Kingston, NY store and purchased 6 gift cards for $250 a piece. I was then directed to buy 4 more. When I completed that transaction I was informed by a Sephora employee I was alerted that I had reached my max for the day. She explained that the company was aware of scams using their gift cards. So evidently, Sephora's attempt to thwart this scam involves telling customers, after they've purchased a rather anomalous $2,500 of gift cards and cutting them off. Why Sephora doesn't ask the customer when begining the purchase if they've been directed by someone else to buy the cards, just like the folks at the airport ask you if you packed your own bags, is quite obvious. They know about the scam, and could stop most instances, but would prefer to extract $2,500 from the victims and then claim that they are powerless to do anything about it.

As soon as I was told of the scam, I checked the e-mail address and confirmed with the employee that it was a scam and that I needed them to cancel the cards immediately. I was told that this was "not possible". A terrible choice of words, as Sephora is the one who creates and manages this system and could quite easily enable their employees to cancel cards, but obviously that would get in the way of their efforts to enable this crime and profit from it. And so, they claim powerlessness. I immediately called my bank and asked them to stop payment. I was told that they couldn't do so until the charge officially posted, which would be too late.

After going back and forth with my bank and getting nowhere, I e-mailed Sephora and asked them to provide me with restitution. Considering the insane mark ups on beauty products, the most this could have actually cost them was something like $300 (being generous here), and would probably have been amenable to covering their costs on the products. But no, it's been several weeks and they continue to drag their feet, ask me the same requests over and over again, in what is either a case of incredible incompetence or much more likely, cynical machinations to get me to give up on getting my money back. At one point they even tried the excuse that this is happening at other businesses, so obviously they shouldn't be in any way accountable for intentionally creating systems that facilitate this crime.

For the uninitiated, this easily clears the bar for negligence. They have a duty of care to not let their business be used for crimes, it's foreseeable that it would happen, as it's already happened so often that their employees have been made aware of it and instituted systems to cap it, and it is easily prevented. But it's actually much worse than just a simple tort case. These are crimes that are being committed and Sephora is aware that their business is a conduit to these crimes, and yet the continue to let it happen, thus making them accessories to massive amounts of fraud.

In summation, Sephora is, in addition to being a beauty products purveyor, also a racketeering organization, clearly guilty of crimes that would fall under RICO (The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) Act of 1970. Originally formulated to thwart operations like the mafia, but now apply to the unethical and amoral activities of corporate America. Sephora is a criminal organization and should be held accountable for the many felonies it has been knowingly a conduit for.

[beiehdhej]

Have you had any luck? This exact thing just happened to my boyfriend, to a T.

[LaurieBT]

@ScamVictim289, I'm so sorry to learn of your experience and appreciate you sharing this with us. I'll place a request for our teams to reach out to you so this can be looked into further. 

For more information about gift card scams, please visit: https://www.sephora.com/beauty/gift-card-scam-awareness 

[ScamVictim289]

I see. So Sephora's response to victims of crimes that they've participated in is to provide a link to a facile, boilerplate explanation of the crimes Sephora is aware of and doing absolutely nothing to prevent?

Please help me understand why a company so exceptionally competent that they’ve managed to dominate in a highly competitive business environment has such horrendously incompetent protections to prevent their customers falling victim to criminal activity, while the company continues to profit from the crimes? 

Might the answer be that Sephora has evaluated the circumstances and concluded that it is more profitable to allow their company to be an accessory to massive fraud instead of doing the very, very simple things that would prevent them?

[ScamVictim289]

Surprise, surprise, whenever one tries to message another user that has made mention of the term "Class Action", this forum puts up an error message. If someone has got something cooking here, please message me, if you can find a way to do so. I wrote the FTC and the San Francisco DA's office, alerting them to this participation in massive fraud, but that's a criminal matter. If we want restitution for the crimes perpetrated against us that Sephora is a knowing and willing participant in, we likely need to find an ambitious lawyer who will relish the opportunity to take a case with such extensive documentation of malfeasance,