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I've never heard of geting VAC banned from receiving a gift.

You must be confusing this with something else, as no ban will result from receiving/activating gifts. At most, games may be revoked if they were acquired through illegal activity before reaching you - that's the worse that can happen.

I think you're confusing it with a real policy where in theory Valve can ban you if you use VPN to buy yourself a gift from a cheaper region. No one is going to ban you if you just activate a gift you got from a "friend". If it's not your region, you just might not be able to play the game for like 3 months and then it will be playable afterwards.

Stop hearing about imaginary things and you'll get more people that know about them. Steam stopped selling gifts to inventory to wait before giving them away, that's about it.