Redbox, a game and movie rental company in the United States is suffering from fraud with their discs. The company provides fully automated video rental stores on nearly 35,000 locations across the US where consumers can rent movies and games. Using a touch screen you can rent a disc from the system or bring it back. And the latter causes problems.
As there is no real person involved, people are finding ways to trick the system. Several users on the internet came home with their rental to find out that the original discs is replaced by CD recordables or even photocopies of the discs. It's already known since 2010 that it's possible to use this trick but now, in 2012, a new wave of users seem to suffer from the trick.
The scam apparently seems to work because the machines only check for a bar-code on the disc which can be peeled off and put on another round form such as a CD Recordable. But if that's not easy enough it also works by returning a photocopy of the disc. Because the fraudulent discs are not recognized and removed by the system others end up with the useless discs or photocopies. The only requirement for the machine to accept a 'disc' seems to be that it's round, has a hole in the middle and that the Rexbox bar-code/QR code is readable. If those requirements are met the Redboxes seem accept the disc and consider it legitimate.
The company easily refunds those who receive a paper disc, but that doesn't make up for getting out again for another attempt to rent the movie you were planning to watch. As Redbox uses creditcard payments it should be possible to trace the scammers, unless they used fake or stolen credit cards.
