A 93-year-old man pushed his cart out of a Costco in Portland, Oregon, on a Thursday afternoon. On the store’s surveillance video, three men fall in behind him and follow him out. His wallet came out of his back pocket, and he never felt a thing. He checked out at 5 p.m., got home at 5:30, and started calling Visa and MasterCard. He was already too late. The thieves had used his cards at a local retail outlet and walked out with about $1,500 in gift cards, a Portland police detective said. Portland police say he was not unlucky. He was picked, by a crew that works big box store parking lots up and down the coast.
The crew that follows you to your car
Portland police detectives spent that spring working a string of pickpocketing incidents in Costco parking lots around the metro area. Detective Jordan Zaitz, who was trying to track the group down, said the thieves are hunting for identities and credit cards, and that the victims usually have no idea it is happening until much later. “It makes me sick,” she said.
This is not two guys freelancing. “They’re pretty organized. I think this is something that they’ve been doing for a really long time,” Zaitz said. Police have confirmed pickpocketing attempts at Costcos in Portland and Tigard, plus the Washington towns of Kirkland, Puyallup, Tukwila and Lynnwood.
The 93-year-old told a Portland television station that losing everything in a wallet is devastating, and that the worst part is the grind of replacing a driver’s license and the rest of the cards. He said he hopes police break up the ring.
The moment you are most exposed
It is not the checkout line. It is the ninety seconds when your trunk is open and your hands are full. Detectives have video of a woman loading her purchases into her car with her purse sitting inside it. Someone walked up and took her wallet out of the purse. Police did not know who she was, because she never filed a report.
Zaitz’s advice is blunt and free: “Have your head on a swivel when you’re out in the parking lots, even when you’re inside stores, don’t leave your purse on the back of your chair. Keep it in your lap or in front of you.” When you get to the car, she says to put the purse inside first and then unload the groceries, or keep it on your body the whole time. Men carrying a wallet in a back pocket should button the pocket.
Two weeks later police said they had identified three men, and put photos of them on the Portland Police Bureau’s website without releasing names. Reporting it fast matters more than people think: store surveillance video is only kept for so long, and detectives wanted to charge the group with every crime they could tie to it.
The friendly stranger who hugs you
A different play is running in warehouse and shopping center lots, and it does not involve any sleight of hand you would notice. Montgomery County, Maryland police call these distraction thefts. Someone walks up with friendly conversation, asks for directions, pays you a compliment, sometimes drapes “gifted” jewelry on you. While you are being nice back, they are taking the jewelry you are already wearing.
Fairfax County, Virginia police described a case on March 20, 2026 at 1:30 p.m., in the 6900 block of Hechinger Drive in Springfield. A woman in a white SUV approached a shopper who was returning a cart, slipped a ring onto her finger, hugged her, and swapped out her necklace. The SUV was gone before the victim understood what had happened. Detectives took out warrants over that theft and a similar one in Herndon for a 21-year-old Baltimore woman, who is wanted rather than convicted. That same afternoon at 3:55 p.m., in the 6800 block of Commerce Street in Franconia, a shopper approached by a black SUV had a necklace and bracelets replaced with costume jewelry. Police have not identified the pair in that one.
The same routine has turned up in a Costco lot. On April 6, 2026, around 12:20 p.m., a man and a woman approached an 85-year-old man in the parking lot of the Costco on Erb Street West in Waterloo, Ontario. They struck up a conversation, and the female suspect removed the necklace he was wearing. They left in a white SUV. He was not hurt. The investigation is ongoing.
Police guidance here is simple and slightly rude, which is the point. Do not engage with strangers who approach you unexpectedly. If someone puts something on you, take it off and walk away. Never let anyone touch your property.
Where the stolen cards end up
Cards taken in a parking lot get spent somewhere, and often that somewhere is another warehouse store. The South Windsor Police Department in Connecticut said officers were called to the Costco at 1220 Tamarack Ave around 3 p.m. on Sunday 28 June after reports of two shoplifters actively stealing and trying to pay at self-checkout with fraudulent credit cards.
Store staff had already been warned. Police said the same two had allegedly tried a similar scheme at the Costco in Enfield, roughly a 30-minute drive north. Officers arrested Brittany A. Howard, 35, of the Bronx, New York, and Kasheem M. Williams, 34, of Brooklyn, and said they found 28 stolen financial documents in the suspects’ vehicle, every one under a different name, along with goods believed taken from the other Costco.
Both were found to have active out-of-state warrants. Williams had an extraditable warrant out of Suffolk County, New York, on multiple charges including burglary, strangulation and assault. Howard had an extraditable warrant out of Hudson County, New Jersey, on credit card theft charges. The pair now face additional charges including 28 counts of payment card theft, larceny, identity theft and conspiracy. They were held on $250,000 surety bonds and were scheduled to appear in Manchester Superior Court.
What a real Costco email looks like
One member account, relayed by Parade and not corroborated by Costco or police, describes an email version nastier than the usual junk, because the email itself is genuine. The formatting is right, the branding is right, the order details are right. The tampering is inside the order, in a field like the shipping name or address, where a scammer has dropped in an urgent line about canceling the order and a phone number to call.
Call it and you reach a calm, apologetic person who says there was a billing mistake and offers to fix it. Fixing it means installing software that gives them your screen, then walking you through a refund that shows a fake overpayment, then pressuring you to send back money that was never sent. The payments they want are the ones that do not come back: wire transfers and gift cards.
Costco’s own fraud guidance covers this exact situation. If you get an order confirmation for something you did not order from Costco.com, do not click any links and do not open any attachments. Email from Costco comes from a Costco.com domain, and the company says unsolicited messages from Costco do not ask for your username, password, credit card information, birth date or Social Security number.
The $500 gift card survey
The other big one arrives as a reward. The sender name reads Costco, Costco Rewards or Costco Member Services. It congratulates you and offers a $500 gift card, a Ninja CREAMi, a Yeti cooler or a Samsung TV for a two-minute survey. The page you land on is in Costco red and white and asks a few softball questions about how often you shop there.
Then it asks for a card number to cover shipping, set low enough to feel like nothing. That small charge is the bait. The fine print you scrolled past authorizes a recurring monthly charge for a wellness club or savings program that has nothing to do with the warehouse. The tell is the sender address behind the display name, which turns out to be a random Gmail or an unrelated domain rather than @costco.com.
Costco keeps a running list, and it is long
The company publishes a Currently Known Scams page, and the sheer length of it tells you how much of this is circulating. Membership payment failed alerts. Overcharge reimbursement texts. A Yeti wagon offer. A Thanksgiving turkey dinner survey. A free Samsung TV. Costco’s position on all of them is the same: the offers are not from Costco Wholesale, do not click the links, do not send the sender anything.
One entry deserves special attention because it comes by phone. Scammers have spoofed Costco’s home office number (425-313-8100), its ecommerce number (800-955-2292) and its membership number (800-774-2678). The caller already knows your name, address and phone number, and claims an account opened in your name in China has fraud activity on it and that police have been notified. Another version is a job offer promising large daily pay for an hour or so of work, four days a week. Costco says none of it is theirs, and directs people to report scams to the Federal Trade Commission.
What actually protects you
Not every incident is quiet. In Greenville, South Carolina, police said a man walked into the Costco on Woodruff Road on 13 August, busted open the jewelry counter display cases and was detained by customers until officers arrived. He was carrying what looked like a hammer and mentioned he had a gun, and police confirmed he was equipped with a machete and a pickaxe. Jose Alejandro Giraldo, 24, has been charged with armed robbery and assault and battery, third degree.
Nothing on this list requires you to buy an app or change how you shop. Keep your wallet in a front pocket or a buttoned one. Purse goes in the car before the groceries do, not after. Do not stand and chat with a stranger who materializes beside your cart, and if someone puts jewelry on you, hand it back and leave. Those three habits beat almost everything the parking lot crews are doing.
Online, one rule does the work. Never call a phone number that came to you in an email, and never click a link in one. Open the app or type costco.com yourself and check your orders there. Real problems with a real membership will be waiting for you inside the account. Everything else is somebody hoping you were in a hurry.
