FBI Warns of Massive Pokémon Card Scam Hitting Shops

A stolen credit card number shouldn’t be enough to walk out of a shop with thousands of dollars in Pokémon cards. Yet that’s the scheme the FBI says has cost some New Jersey retailers tens of thousands of dollars. For a shop owner, a sale that looks routine can become a loss weeks after the buyer leaves. The FBI’s Newark field office issued its warning on October 29 after criminals targeted seven New Jersey shops between September 2025 and March 2026. The cases show why trading card theft deserves to be treated as a business crime, not brushed aside as trouble over a children’s hobby. According to investigators, the scam starts when a customer tries to pay by tapping a phone against a card reader. The customer then claims the payment failed and asks the cashier to type in a credit card number. That number belongs to a stolen or compromised card. The shop may not learn about the fraud for weeks. By then, the thief has had time to resell the cards. A cashier’s effort to help finish a purchase can leave the business without its stock or a valid payment. “What they are doing is, they’re using fraudulent credit cards to accomplish that,” the FBI’s Kelly Blanchfield told News 12 New Jers...