Hacking Amex gift cards and consumer protection?

1

My GF had an Amex gift card with about $1500 on it and $1460 was hacked off.
Details: she was given the card over a year ago,
Had used it for a smaller purchase online and left a balance,
Had the card registered in her Iphone wallet,
Had the card set up on her amazon account,
Has thumb print protection on her phone,
When it was hacked in November it was run through PayPal and someone in CO. turns up
with a name and address. We assume fake.
Many calls to Amex and Paypal and they say there is nothing they can do.

To me it sounds like some kind of random fishing for numbers but IDK. Any help appreciated.
Also, she has other Amex cards. How can she turn them into cash? How can she protect the money on the other cards?
thanks for any ideas you may have.
Happy New Year

2

Every now and then we will get gift cards for doing a market research study or from some promotion or rebate on a purchased product. My wife immediately loads them into her Amazon account and drains the funds. Sometimes that doesn’t work so she will buy Amazon gift cards with them on her account.

The reality is that gift cards have a huge slippage rate which is why companies issue those instead of checks or cash.

3

This was a scam and we can’t even figure how they did it and why there is no consumer protections in place. None of the players have been able to give an explanation or resolution.