What use are ITunes gift cards to crooks?

ITunes gift cards seem to be the scammer's new collection method.

Maybe I'm dense, but I can't see of what use ITunes gift cards are to crooks.  From all I've read and heard, redeeming them would, by necessity, leave a dangerous "digital" trail that could lead the police to find them.

Much thanks to any and all that respond.

Probably to sell them on the street. "psst, kid? Wanna $100 iTune card for $10?"

Much thanks for quick reply.

Yeah, that's fine for a few hundred dollars worth, but there are stories of people being taken for thousands with cards worth $450 - $500.  How can they deal with tens of thousands of dollars worth?

Also, in my efforts to research this, I Googled "ITunes scams" and many sites say things similar to this, "the money on the card is quickly depleted by the scammer,"  but with no indication on how this is possible.  This also kinda negates the "psst, kid?" approach.

There are billions of people in the world and many are perfectly happy with black market goods.  Tens of thousands, heck, tens of millions of dollars is a drop in the ocean.

You and I are operating under a critical disability: we're not thieves and don't think that way. If someone wants it bad enough: any system can be gamed; any form of security can be broken; any trail can be covered (at least long enough for crooks to disappear) Unlike you, me and the others here, running afoul of, and escaping, the law is their job.

I've been here long enough to have lost my curiosity about these things. When an unidentified party demands money over the phone, hang up. What else do we need to know? We've got toys to play with, pumpkin pie to eat, you know... important stuff. Merry, merry.

I've been curious about how things work my whole life and seeing all the reports now, of scammers using ITunes, piqued my curiosity.  Fortunately, I'm in a position that I don't ever HAVE to answer the phone and so I rarely bother to anymore, unless I'm near AND recognize the number on my CID.

Just one final thought.  Why use ITunes for just a fraction of the proceeds when, with the more "traditional" methods, they can get 100% virtually risk free?

Again, muchly thanks & Happy Healthy '17 to you & yours.

There are many places where you can redeem virtually any gift card for cash (cardcash.com, cardpool.com, and others). Naturally, they take a cut of each transaction, but to someone who's obtained the card by theft (for all practical purposes) it's worth giving away a small percentage of their ill-gotten gains.

I can relate to piqued curiosity about such things even without desire to run scams myself.  I'm the same way, wanting to understand the logic and motivations.  Even with incredibly cheap, exploited labor the amount of man-hours they must spend to get an iTunes gift card for which they'll only be able to collect a fraction of the value puzzles me, too.  I'd think there are scams to run with better ROI.

Between this thread's questions and my own, remembering iTunes cards I've received over the years and not being an iTunes user, I went Googling and found this article suggesting it's surprisingly worth the scammers' efforts. (I still have a hard time believing it's worth the trouble.)

http://nbc4i.com/2016/05/31/itunes-gift-card-scams-are-flourishing/

byronb wrote:

Just one final thought.  Why use ITunes for just a fraction of the proceeds when, with the more "traditional" methods, they can get 100% virtually risk free?

I think the issues with those more traditional methods are their "paper" trail and reversibility.

Yeah, I've never understood why they would want iTunes cards instead of Green Dot or other things of the sort. Unless it's kids, who want to download half the Apple catalog, and can't find an honest job.

At one time, one of the major money sending outfits like Western Union and Moneygram wouldn't accept money transfers to Nigeria. So, sometimes, someone pays attention to the scams and tries protect us from ourselves. Why buy music on iTunes, anyway? Haven't they heard of Pandora? YouTube?

Probably the same crowd that gets milk with food stamps then turns around and sells milk to other people.  Then the cash is used to buy an alcohol beverage of choice.

Actually, if it's not a credit card, neither paper trail nor reversibility plays into the equation. Western Union, Green Dot, and the various other intermediaries listed in the link you provided are all, pretty universally, described by the quote there: “As soon as you put money on a card and share the code with (scammers), the money’s gone for good,” Which still doesn't explain why they would use iTunes cards instead of more conventional -- cash only -- ways to rip folks off.

Profuse thanks to all the wonderful, knowledgeable folks who answered my question.  Thanks, too, to 800notes for satisfying my curiosity on who's calling, so I no longer bother to answer the phone.  My answering machine has the infinite patience I lack.     :-)

I vaguely recall there were some legal changes that made Green Dot, et al., a less attractive means of scamming cash.  Hypothetically, if there are 12 ways to scam, and you make 10 of them harder, then you'd expect a lot more activity with the remaining 2.

Hopefully when the "IRS" demands you pay your fines with iTunes gift cards, more people will realize that this is completely bogus.

I would hope that if someone went into best buy or a similar store looking to buy $1000 or so in iTunes cards the store manager would come out and give 2 minutes of scam warning/advice.

Don't count on it.  Best Buy gets their own piece of the action too.