A Quebecer has just been sentenced to nearly five years in prison in the United States and to pay a fine of more than US$800,000 for selling thousands of pirated gift cards on the Web.
According to US authorities, Richard Verret was the head of an illegal site for reselling “gift cards from major restaurant chains, stores, entertainment venues and other retail chains”.
The Quebec resident was arrested in April 2022 at the airport in Orlando, Florida, then transferred to Louisiana, where he had been charged a month earlier.
Verret, 41, faced five counts of “unauthorized solicitation of access devices” and one count of “trafficking in counterfeit access devices”.
Technique simple
His fraud technique was quite simple: he obtained gift cards that he knew were active, then identified a large number of similar numbers that had also been issued by retailers.
Verret would then determine if the numbers he obtained had any remaining balances that could be used and spent.
Since it is possible to use a gift card through mobile applications or online shopping sites, Verret could “access account balances and spend the funds without ever having actual and physical possession of the gift card. “, can we read in the agreed summary of the facts presented during his guilty plea.
Verret has operated in this way since at least 2018, according to US authorities.
Low price
These gift cards were then offered for sale at ridiculous prices on sites controlled by Verret. One could in particular obtain for 5 American dollars a card with a value of 25 dollars in a popular supermarket or for 250 dollars, a value of 1000 dollars in a furniture store.
In February 2022, one of Verret’s sites offered more than 550,000 gift cards from 500 different companies. The whole thing was valued at around 22 million US dollars, or more than 29 million Canadian dollars, according to estimates by US authorities.
The websites are no longer active and have since been seized by US authorities, reads a notice that serves as the homepage.
This notice from the US authorities appears when you arrive on the home page of Richard Verret’s websites. Screenshot taken from www.miami24k.com website
According to screenshots filed in evidence by US prosecutors, Verret claimed in 2019 to make around $900 a day with his gift card resale websites.
Verret eventually pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in September 2022. He was sentenced in late June to 57 months in prison and to return more than US$810,000.
The man, who has no criminal history in Quebec, appealed his sentence.
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2023-07-15 19:45:00
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