An 11-year-old Toronto boy took an envelope of family emergency cash, slipped away from his grandmother inside a Walmart, and completed two separate $1,000 purchases of Roblox gift cards. The receipts he left behind list multiple ROBLX entries at $200 each that add up to exactly $1,000 on each transaction.
Parents Hong Jin and Jason Kim said their son grabbed the entire envelope containing $2,000 to $3,000 before leaving for his grandmother’s house. The cash had been kept as the family’s emergency savings. At the store the grandmother took him to the toy section. He stepped away briefly, approached a cashier, and paid cash for the cards in two transactions.
The family only realized the money was gone later.
“Before he went to his grandma’s place, he took the whole envelope, which has $2,000 to $3,000 in cash,”
Jin told reporters. Kim said,
“I was shocked. I’m still shocked. I can’t believe a small kid could spend $2,000 at Walmart.”
They returned to the store with the unused cards and the two receipts. Walmart staff refused any refund, calling the purchases final sales. The receipts themselves show the split: each one rings up a string of ROBLX gift cards, most marked at $200.00, with a subtotal and total of $1,000.00. One receipt carries the transaction identifiers STW 05831 OP 001908 TE 14 TR 00533.
Jin questioned how an 11-year-old carrying that much cash could finish the purchases without anyone intervening.
“How can a little kid purchase $2,000 in cash and no one is suspicious about it?”
she asked.
Walmart Canada reviewed the matter after the family complained. A spokesperson said the associates correctly applied the company’s $1,000 per-transaction limit on gift cards. The boy simply made two separate purchases. The company stated there are no age restrictions on buying gift cards at its Canadian stores, though individual card issuers may set their own rules for redemption. Walmart said it contacted the family directly to discuss the circumstances.
Roblox is a free-to-play online platform where players create and explore virtual worlds and buy premium avatar items, clothing, and tools with Robux. The gift cards convert straight into that currency. The family has not said whether the cards were later redeemed or what steps they took at home after the discovery.
Consumer advocates note that games like Roblox offer parental controls, yet those settings must be activated across the game, app stores, and devices. Without them, large cash or gift-card spending can move quickly and prove hard to reverse once the money has left the register.
The two receipts now sit as the clearest record of what happened: an 11-year-old walked out of a Toronto-area Walmart with $2,000 in Roblox cards bought on the family’s emergency savings, and the retailer treated both sales as final.
