A Miami man was arrested after police say he was stealing money from Southwest Floridians with counterfeit gift cards.
According to the Cape Coral Police Department, a call was received about a man running a gift card fraud scheme on Wednesday afternoon.
Loss prevention officers at a store that called the police reported seeing a man place numerous compromised gift cards throughout their gift card rack.
When the Loss Prevention Officer pointed officers toward a car, officers stopped it in the parking lot and identified the suspect as Sebastian Garcia Gallego, 25, from Miami Gardens.
Police say, in this scam people will steal the gift card account number and PIN information, then put them back on the rack. Once the gift cards are purchased, the suspects will then remotely drain the funds from the cards.
Gallego is believed to have placed more than 50 gift cards on the gift card rack, which ranged in price from $20 to $500.
Police say Gallego also visited other businesses in Cape Coral and committed the same crime. Gallego confessed that he gets paid to drive to a new city every week to distribute hundreds of compromised gift cards.
The Cape Coral Police Department has been able to identify these locations and is currently working on notifying management at these stores.
Gallego was arrested and charged with Larceny, Fraud, and Property Damage.
He was taken to Lee County Jail.
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