The Gift Card Scam That Targets Your Employees, Not Your Customers

How does this scam actually work?

A scammer poses as the business owner, a manager, or another executive, usually by text and sometimes by email, and asks an employee to urgently buy gift cards, often “for a client” or “for the team,” with a promise of reimbursement that never comes. The FTC issued a consumer alert on this exact scam in January 2026, and it keeps working because it targets whoever’s willing to help their boss out quickly, not whoever’s careless.

This is different from most payment fraud merchants worry about. It doesn’t touch your POS, your processor, or a customer’s card. It goes straight at an employee’s phone or inbox, and the business only finds out after the gift cards are already bought and the codes already sent.

What does the message actually look like?

The request usually comes from a number or email address that looks close to the real one but isn’t quite, and it’s built around urgency: an unexpected, time-sensitive ask that doesn’t leave room to think it over. The FTC notes scammers sometimes avoid the obvious wording and ask for “Google certificates” or similar instead of saying “gift cards” outright, specifically to dodge spam filters and make the request sound more mundane. Once an employee buys the cards, the scammer asks for photos of the cards or the codes on the back, which is the actual payout, since whoever has the code can spend the balance immediately.

Why do these requests work on people who’d normally know better?

Because they’re built to short-circuit the normal instinct to double-check. The message comes from someone with real authority over the employee, asks for something that sounds like an ordinary favor, and creates pressure to act now rather than verify first. An employee who’d never wire money to a stranger will often buy a $200 gift card for “the boss” without a second thought, because the request doesn’t feel like fraud. It feels like doing your job.

Does this really spike around the holidays?

Gift card scams in general do. Consumer-protection groups, including the Better Business Bureau, have tracked a rise in gift card scam reports during the final weeks of the year for several years running, and BBB’s Scam Tracker data showed roughly a 50% jump in gift card scam reports during one recent stretch compared to the year before. That’s about gift card scams broadly, not the boss-impersonation version specifically, but the timing lines up: a request tied to a holiday party, a client gift, or an end-of-year bonus is an easier story to believe in November and December than it would be in March.

What should a simple company policy actually say?

You don’t need anything elaborate. A short, written policy that every employee has actually seen beats a vague “be careful” reminder.

Policy line	What it stops
No one, including owners and managers, will ever ask you to buy gift cards for business purposes by text or email	Removes the plausible cover story the scam depends on
Any unusual or urgent purchase request gets verified by calling the person back on a number you already have saved, not the one that contacted you	Breaks the scam’s reliance on a spoofed or lookalike number
Never send gift card codes, PINs, or photos of a card to anyone by text or email, for any reason	Closes off the actual payout even if the first two steps fail
Report anything that looks like this to a manager right away, even if you’re not fully sure	Catches it early enough to possibly stop or reverse the purchase

Put it somewhere employees will actually see it, not buried in a handbook nobody reopens, and say it out loud once during onboarding or a team meeting. Most of this scam’s success comes from employees not knowing it’s a known, named pattern until it’s happening to them.

What if an employee already bought the cards?

Move fast. Contact the retailer or gift card issuer immediately, since some can freeze the balance if you report it quickly enough, before the scammer drains it. Keep the receipt and a photo of the card if you have one. Then report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, which helps investigators track the pattern even if your specific case isn’t recoverable.

This isn’t a scam a POS upgrade or a better processor fixes. It’s a policy and awareness problem, and the fix costs nothing beyond ten minutes of telling your staff it exists.

If you want help thinking through basic fraud safeguards for your business beyond this one, get in touch.

Sources:

• FTC Consumer Alert: “No, that’s not your boss asking you to buy gift cards,” January 2026
• Better Business Bureau Scam Tracker reporting on holiday-season gift card scam trends, via local news coverage

This is general information, not legal advice.