How Coles and NSW Police busted an Apple gift card tampering scamBy Emilia Terzon and Jasper Wells
Posted Wed 2 Sep 2026 at 4:38amWed 2 Sep 2026 at 4:38amWed 2 Sep 2026 at 4:38am
It is a movement of the hands barely visible on the grainy CCTV.
A man standing in front of a rack of colourful gift cards reaches into his pockets, and in several reaching motions, places cards back on the supermarket racks.
It is one of the moments Coles’s fraud team captured as they were building a case against the man last year, alleging he was tampering with Apple gift cards in its supermarkets.
The ABC can confirm the man was later convicted for the incident, after Coles worked with police to monitor the man originally from Taiwan and eventually bust him with a haul of tampered cards.
“Gift card tampering and fraud is an evolving challenge affecting retailers and customers both in Australia and internationally,” the supermarket said to ABC News in a statement.
“Coles takes the issue extremely seriously.”
Loading…
What is gift card tampering?
An ABC investigation this week revealed supermarket customers nationwide were reporting gift card tampering, with the issue possibly linked to a wider global scam.
Homeland Security in the US has been investigating this issue for several years, with Project Red Hook linking it to money laundering in China, human trafficking and even murder.
“All of America’s top 20 retailers were being affected,” lead investigator Adam Parks said.
“Young Chinese nationals were being interdicted and arrested while taking cards off the rack, blank cards off the rack, taking them away from the store.”
Mr Parks said the organised crime they found had a network of people dedicated to taking apart the cards, stealing their codes, and then returning them packaged back in store.
“Once they were put on the rack, then an unwitting consumer would go and would purchase those cards, and put funds on the cards,” he said.
“And then [the] Chinese organised crime syndicates were able to spend the card before the unwitting consumer was [able to].”
As well as the CCTV vision supplied to ABC News, Coles captured the man on numerous other occasions at supermarkets around Sydney in March and April 2025, court documents show.
In some security video, the man was seen taking gift cards from the supermarket’s aisles, while in others like the one ABC has witnessed, he was seen returning them.
Security staff then went down the supermarket aisle and noticed numerous Apple cards worth hundreds of dollars had been tampered with, and some stock had gone missing from the shelves.
After an internal investigation, Coles contacted the police.
Loading…
How the arrest unfolded
In April, officers attached to Campsie Police Area Command started covertly tracking their suspect.
Phone mapping records show the man regularly travelled to regional New South Wales, Goulburn and the Southern Highlands, with police suspecting he was also tampering with cards there.
Police obtained a warrant and searched the 32-year-old man’s home in Eastwood, in Sydney’s western suburbs, on May 9, 2025.
They found a bag containing 47 iTunes gift cards in bundles of five labelled with Post-it Notes.
The cards ranged between $100 and $500 in value, and there were nine more of them in his car.
Police said he told them outside of the interview that he was hired by an unnamed criminal syndicate, according to the court documents.
After arresting him, police alleged that he handled 61 Apple and iTunes gift cards worth more than $10,000.
He was charged with five counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage, and with two counts of dealing with property proceeds of crime less than $100,000 and less than $5,000.
He was then refused bail after police said there was a risk of “interfering with witnesses and tampering with or fabricating evidence”.
The man was eventually convicted on July 22, 2025, and received a 15-month suspended prison sentence and a two-year community corrections order.
The ABC has been unable to reach the man for comment.
Trouble ‘joining all the dots’
While the case highlights that gift card tampering is happening in Australia, private investigator Ken Gamble said “joining the dots” nationally might take more work.
The Australian Federal Police and the financial crimes regulator AUSTRAC both said this was not their domain.
“This is not a matter for the AFP,” a spokesperson said.
And the authority that handles complaints about financial products, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), said it had limited scope over gift cards.
“It’s definitely theft, but it would be one law enforcement would give a very low priority to because of the monetary value,” Mr Gamble said.
“Unless they join all the dots here and they can see that this is done in great volume, [then] you’re not going to get law enforcement to put the resources in.
“And that’s the problem. That’s why this type of crime is potentially something that could become very prolific in Australia.”
Apple changed its gift card packaging in early 2025 to make it harder to open. The tech giant defended its measures to prevent tampering and declined multiple requests for direct comment.
Coles said stopping the crime took more than just the supermarkets and police.
“Coles works in conjunction with other retailers, gift card and brand partners, and law enforcement agencies to share relevant information and support investigations into suspected gift card fraud,” the company said.
“We know that there is no single measure that will eliminate gift card fraud, and this isn’t an issue that can be solved by retailers alone. It requires cooperation across retailers, gift card providers and law enforcement.”