Video of sheriff’s deputies taking down a man at a Target store piqued our curiosity.
“Like a piñata, gift cards just flew out from the inside of his clothing,” said Sacramento Sheriff’s Detective Andy Cater.
After the unusual arrest, the Sacramento District Attorney charged Ningning Sun with attempted grand theft. Investigators accuse Sun of quietly taking thousands of gift cards off store shelves, then putting them back -- but only after someone tampered with them to steal the money a shopper would later load on the cards.
“The way that this is done is very sophisticated,” said Deputy District Attorney Adrianne McMillan. “The cards are taken without any sort of value on them, they’re tampered with in a way that is not detectable, then they’re re-shelved.”
Sun’s case seemed unusual, even to the deputies who arrested him. “We weren’t sure what he was doing initially when we were watching him on camera.”
Since then, we’ve discovered this was not a one off. Not by a long shot. Our team has combed through dozens of news reports and police reports, coast to coast. We’ve found at least two dozen other recent cases where cops have arrested people with a huge number of gift cards that are believed to be compromised: from 800 cards seized in Ventura County, CA just a week ago, to a whopping 6,900 gift card haul in South Carolina in March.
In all, we’ve found at least 30 arrests and more than 45,000 cards collectively confiscated in California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Ohio, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia, Arizona, South Carolina, Rhode Island, and Texas.
Local
The responds team at our NBC sister station in Dallas recently highlighted a case in Plano, Texas.
"It's not a one off. It's not just a Plano situation,” said Plano Police Det. Jerry Minton. “It is a worldwide situation.”
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Just like us, detectives are connecting a growing number of dots.
“Our phones blew up,” said Cater, in Sacramento, of the response to Sun’s arrest and subsequent news reports about it. “We were getting calls from all over the United States.”
Cater says, and NBC Bay Area has confirmed, that a federal investigation is now underway.
“Under the name ‘Operation Red Hook,’” Cater said. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working with local law enforcement to connect gift card cases. Cater says this once-unusual theft, that first appeared on our radar with Sun in Sacramento, could total billions of dollars.
“There’s no one person doing it,” Cater said. “It’s clearly a group of people who are well fairly organized and have some financial backing to operate a large scale operation.”
Despite so many arrests, Cater believes thieves are still targeting gift card racks and they’re all using the same playbook. “The stores that are being targeted are similar. The types of cards that are being targeted are similar. The method of tampering with the cards is similar.”
Sun remains in jail. He has not entered a plea. His attorney has not responded to NBC Bay Area.
Sun is due back in court in three weeks. We plan to be there.
To protect yourself, detectives say buy gift cards online or from stores that lock them up. Once a card is loaded, spend the balance as soon as possible.
