An employee of an Aiken store was talked into activating more than $14,000 in gift cards over the phone, according to the Aiken Department of Public Safety. The incident happened Wednesday at Kroger on Whiskey Road, according to an incident report. A manager told officers a store clerk received a phone call from a man with "a heavy Indian accent" just before 3 a.m., police said. The suspect told the clerk he was a loss-prevention officer for Kroger and that he needed her to activate gift cards for him police said.
The suspect "talked" the clerk into activating more than $14,000 worth of gift cards over the phone between 2:50 a.m. and 5:15 a.m., police said. The manager said they were able to void some of the transactions; however, Kroger still lost more than $9,700 in gift cards for Amazon and MasterCard, police said.