A UCLA student managed to pilfer over $16,000 off of other peoples Visa gift cards over the course of a couple of weeks.  It isn’t yet clear how the student got hold of the gift card numbers.

We have yet to see open-loop gift cards that are not packaged well enough so that their sensitive information is not hidden away from casual viewing.  Someone would have to open the packaging to be able to copy the gift card numbers, which would be required to steal money from them, and open-loop gift card packaging is very sensitive to tampering.

One possibility is that the student was able to take steal the cards, open the packaging in such a way so it was overlooked by the purchasers, and return them to the store.  Always a good idea to inspect the packaging closely when you buy one of these cards.