A surveillance camera in Portland, Oregon caught the whole thing in May 2024. A 93-year-old man pushed his cart out of a Costco, and three men fell in step behind him. One of them slid the wallet right out of his back pocket. He got home by 5:30 that evening. By the time he called Visa and MasterCard, the thieves had already run his cards at a store nearby.
Portland police detective Jordan Zaitz, who worked the case, did not soften what the crew does. “They’re out there hunting for people’s identity, stolen credit cards, and it’s people who probably don’t even realize that it’s happening, or not until much later,” she said. In that one case, the crew walked off with about $1,500 in gift cards.
Portland police have logged pickpocketing attempts at Costco lots in Portland and Tigard, plus Washington towns like Kirkland, Puyallup, Tukwila and Lynnwood. Zaitz’s advice for shoppers was blunt: “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.” That is the warning, and it fits more than just pickpockets. The threats now come at Costco members from the parking lot, the phone, and the inbox all at once.
The parking lot is where most of them work
Organized theft crews love a Costco lot for one reason: you are distracted. You are wrestling a cart the size of a go-kart, loading forty pounds of paper towels and a rotisserie chicken into the trunk, and your purse is sitting wide open in the child seat. That is the exact moment they want. The men in that Portland video were patient and coordinated, and the victim never felt a thing until it was too late.
Zaitz laid out the fix in plain terms. “When you’re unloading your groceries, put your purse in your car first and then unload your groceries or just have it on you,” she said. “If you’re a man with a wallet in your back pocket, button it and just be aware.” Keep a bag in your lap rather than hooked over a chair back, where a hand can reach it while you eat.
It is not only an American problem. Police in Burlington, Ontario logged at least three pickpocket reports at the Costco on Brant Street in the first weeks of 2026, one of which ended in an arrest. One shopper had a purse taken while loading the car. Another had a phone lifted from a jacket pocket walking across the lot, and by the time she opened Find My it was already on the highway and about to go dark. The takeaway is simple: the second you get to your car, put your valuables inside and lock up before you touch a single bag.
The order email that wants you to call a number
Some of the nastiest email tricks do not even look fake, because parts of them are real. A shopper gets what reads like a genuine Costco order confirmation, right down to the branding and real-looking purchase details. The twist is buried inside the order itself.
Shoppers have reported scammers pushing a real order confirmation into an inbox and loading fake instructions into the shipping name or address field. Instead of your address, you see a note saying the order is on its way and telling you to call a number to cancel it. Call that number and you reach someone posing as Costco support.
From there it gets expensive fast. The person on the phone tries to talk you into installing remote access software so they can “see” your account, then walks you through a fake refund that shows a made-up overpayment on your screen. The whole act is designed to convince you that you owe money back and to get you to send it by wire transfer or gift card, which nobody can reverse. Fall for it and you can lose thousands. A real Costco email will not tell you to call some number for urgent action, and if an order email feels off, do not use any phone number printed inside it. Look the company up yourself.
The survey that promises a Yeti cooler
You know this one even if it has not landed on your phone yet. An email or text shows up with “Costco” as the sender, congratulates you, and dangles a $500 gift card, a Ninja CREAMi, a Yeti cooler, or a Samsung TV in exchange for finishing a two-minute survey. The verdict on it is simple: Costco does not run reward surveys from random email addresses.
The link drops you on a page done up in Costco red and white. It asks a few softball questions, then wants your name, address, and a card number to cover a small shipping fee. The fee is set low on purpose, a few dollars, so it feels like nothing. The real damage sits in the fine print you scrolled past, which signs you up for a recurring monthly charge for some generic-sounding wellness club or savings program that has nothing to do with Costco.
The dead giveaway is the sender. The display name reads Costco, but the actual address is a random Gmail or a lookalike domain. Real Costco email ends in @costco.com, and a real reward never needs your card number to ship anything. The same trick wears a second costume, too: an email claiming your membership has expired, pushing you to the same kind of fake page. If a card field shows up next to a free prize or an urgent renewal button, close the tab.
The phone call and the too-good job offer
Phone scammers have gotten good at faking caller ID, so your screen can show a local Costco warehouse number while a total stranger is on the line. Some claim there is suspicious activity on your account, sometimes spinning a story about international fraud and money you are about to lose. Block the number and some callers simply ring back from a different one about the same thing.
A separate wave of messages goes after people looking for work. Texts and emails under names like “Costco Recruiting” advertise remote jobs paying hundreds of dollars a day, then ask for personal information early or demand upfront fees for training. Costco posts real jobs on its own careers page, not through surprise texts. Any listing that wants money from you before you are hired is fake.
One rule cuts through all of it. Costco does not ask for your sensitive personal or financial information in an unsolicited call, email, or text, so anyone who does is not Costco. And a request to pay with PayPal, Venmo, cryptocurrency, or gift cards is a flashing red light every single time. No real company collects a bill in Apple gift cards.
The trouble that walks through the front door
Not every threat arrives by email. In South Windsor, Connecticut, police arrested two people in June 2026 they called suspected serial Costco shoplifters after staff reported them trying to pay at self-checkout with fraudulent credit cards. Officers said they found 28 stolen financial documents, all under different names, inside the pair’s vehicle. Brittany A. Howard, 35, and Kasheem M. Williams, 34, now face charges including 28 counts of payment card theft, larceny, identity theft and conspiracy, and were held on $250,000 surety bonds.
Then there is the loud, rare kind. In Greenville, South Carolina, in August 2026, a man walked up to the jewelry counter and busted open the display cases before customers detained him until police arrived. Officers said he was carrying a machete and a pickaxe and made mention of having a gun. Jose Alejandro Giraldo, 24, was charged with armed robbery and assault and battery, third degree. Nobody expects you to tackle anyone. But it is a reminder that the jewelry and electronics counters pull in more than bargain hunters, so keep your distance if something feels wrong and let the staff handle it.
The 30-second habit that beats the tricks
The single move that defeats almost every version of this is refusing to act inside the message that reached you. Do not tap the link, do not call the number, do not enter a thing. Nothing real is lost by stopping for half a minute.
Check who actually sent it. Tap or hover over the “from” line. If the address is anything other than one ending in @costco.com, it is fake no matter what the display name says. Then open a browser and type costco.com yourself, or use the Costco app. Real member offers, real renewal notices, and real order details all live in your account there. If it is not in your account, it did not happen.
Report the junk so it stops hitting other people. Forward scam texts to 7726, which spells SPAM on the keypad, and your carrier gets a copy so it can block the sender. Costco also keeps a running list of known scams on its site where you can report the messages you get. And if money already changed hands, call the number on the back of your card right away, ask for a replacement, and have them block any recurring charge from the “survey” merchant before it starts. Speed is the whole ballgame, with a hand in a parking lot and a fake refund on the phone alike. The people running these schemes count on you being busy, distracted, and polite. A few seconds of suspicion is all it takes to ruin their day.
