fairly weird situation….my wife is organizing a back to school drive for a club we're members of. She created Amazon list of all the items she needed, including gift cards so we could buy whatever was left over. Shortly after she created the list, before she sent the link to anyone, a person in Japan bought $100 of gift cards. These are physical gift cards that we have since received in the mail at our club.

Everything is telling me this is a scam. But I'm not sure what the angle is or if we're at risk if we use said gift cards?

I believe if you do not use the gift cards within 7 days you will receive an Amazon box at your doorstep and a half-dead Asian child will crawl out of it. Good luck.

Can't help but probably a reason you didn't post this on the GB

If the gift cards shipped from Amazon and nothing was suspicious about that.

I'd load the gift cards onto my Amazon account and see what happens. You enter the number and it will show a credit on your account. If Amazon accepts their own gift card and credits your account … i don't see the problem, and wouldn't think any more about it.

Add the cards to the account and see what happens.

Seems weird, but not necessarily a scam.

Did she make the list public or private?

Was the list used in the past? I get alerts from various teachers I've purchased from once in awhile when they add new things to their lists. I'm sure it's some feature I checked somewhere. Maybe a former member moved to Japan?

The only nefarious thing I could see is someone used a stolen credit card to make the purchase. Amazon will take the money back if it's still available once it reported as fraudulent.