A former Apple Store employee has been charged with grand larceny and other crimes after allegedly using fraudulent credit and debit card details to purchase an incredible $997,000 worth of Apple gift cards in just three months.
24-year-old Ruben Profit is accused of carrying out the fraudulent purchases while working at the Apple Store in the Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst, the company’s first retail store in Queens. All of the purchases were made between August and October, reports NBC New York …
Profit reportedly overwrote the data on the magnetic strip of the cards to emulate other cards – it’s not yet known how he obtained the card details to do so.
Profit is reported to have told police that he sold the gift cards for 10% of their face value. He is currently being held on bail, and faces a maximum prison sentence of 15 years if convicted.
An investigation launched in October when Apple started getting notifications of charge-backs, which indicate fraudulent transactions, on the Apple gift cards Profit allegedly purchased.
At the time of his arrest, Profit was allegedly in possession of 51 Visa and American Express gift cards with magnetic strips that had been fraudulently re-encoded with credit card information. He also allegedly had seven Apple gift cards worth $2,000 each.
Another alleged fraudster was last year accused of obtaining over $300k’s worth of Apple kit by deception by working a ridiculously simple con on store employees.
Photo: michaeltruskowski.com
