SWIPES Act

Key Points

• The bill doubles the maximum prison sentence for many gift card and access device fraud crimes, from 10 years up to 20 years, with the toughest cases now facing up to 30 years.
• It creates a brand new crime for knowingly defrauding people over age 60, adding a mandatory extra 2 years in prison on top of the sentence for the underlying fraud, which cannot be served at the same time as other sentences.
• Scammers caught with large stashes of stolen or counterfeit cards face harsher penalties: more than 500 devices can mean up to 25 years, and more than 1,000 devices can mean up to 30 years in prison.
• The law updates the legal definition of 'access device' to explicitly cover gift cards, cryptocurrency keys, recovery phrases, and other digital credentials, and also classifies gift cards as monetary instruments under money laundering law.
• A judge cannot place someone convicted under the new elder fraud provision on probation, and that sentence must run consecutively, not concurrently, with other prison time.