BEWARE of New Gift Card Scam - Caller Posing as Apple Support

Just yesterday I received a call that came directly from Apple Support (showed up with the logo and the Apple Help #: 1-***-MYAPPLE). It started as an automated call, telling me my Apple ID had been compromised and to press 1 to speak with a representative. Concerned that I was being called from Apple, I pressed 1 to get more details. I was told that my account had been compromised and that steps needed to be taken immediately to secure my account. They told me it was a very serious case and that Apple's system alerted them that several different locations were trying to access my IP address. They said 2 locations, one of which was mine and the other of which was in a different state. They asked me if both were mine and I said no, only one of them. They requested to screen share and provided me with their "Employee ID #s" (which were fake, as I found out later from an actual Apple rep that the company does not provide their employees with numbers) and their name (I believe the first one identified himself as "Dean Russ"). Notably, all the "employees" I spoke with had strong Indian accents. They showed me all of these foreign IP addresses that supposedly had "access" to my account. They explained to me that in order to safely secure my account and all of my devices that I needed a unique IP address to change to. I am not a very techy person, shame on me for not picking up on it immediately but I just assumed they knew what they were talking about because I know next to nothing about coding and back-end computer stuff. They said the only way to do this was to activate gift cards from a verified Apple store or affiliate and get a unique number from the activated gift card. They told me that the cards had to be in the amount of $500 each for security purposes and that one card may only remove a handful of the foreign connections that had access to my account. They said that Apple, so long as I kept the receipts, would immediately refund me the $$. At this point, again, shame on me for not vetting this as they were on the phone with me. At this point I just wanted the problem fixed and it really freaked me out that they had "shown" me these hackers who could potentially have access to all my personal information. They also said they had to stay on the line with me the entire time, even as I was driving, because in order to ensure that my device was safe they had to be on the phone with me. I complied and drove to Best Buy, and proceeded to buy $2000 (4 gift cards worth), gave them the numbers, and got fake emails from Apple (from Apple Support's email address) with "refund receipts". They said the 2 cards I initially bought were only enough to remove 16/79 foreign connections...they wanted more gift cards. At which pointI snapped into reality and realized that their logic for this made absolutely ZERO sense! I had not previously heard or read about these gift card scams so alarm bells never really went off in my head. Plus the fact that the number was from Apple...usually robo calls will come from my same area code. Long story short, APPLE SUPPORT WILL NEVER CALL YOU. THEY DO NOT MAKE OUTGOING CALLS. DO NOT FALL FOR THIS. I hope this saves even ONE person from the pain, humiliation and misfortune I have gone through the past 24 hours. Keep your eyes peeled, y'all - these phishers are coming up with increasingly sophisticated tactics. I really hope Apple will come out with some sort of statement to publicly warn their customers of this strategy so less people fall for it.

[Edited by Moderator]