United States v. Timothy Truong

I. Background

The purchaser of a gift card loads money onto the card and electronically activates it for use. An activated card can be used to purchase goods from the retailer who sold the card. Many retail gift cards contain a printed panel that can be scratched off to reveal the card’s unique personal identifica- tion number, or PIN. The customer can use the PIN to track how much money is left on the card.

Timothy Truong would steal gift cards from retail stores. With special equipment, Truong would capture the informa- tion that is stored magnetically on each gift card. He would also scratch off a panel to reveal each card’s PIN. After dupli- cating the card (plastic shaped like a credit card), he would return the duplicates to the shelves from which he had stolen the originals. He kept the originals. A few days later, he would use the PIN to learn whether the duplicate gift card had been sold and, if so, how much money had been loaded onto it. If the duplicate gift card had been sold and thereby acti- vated for use, Truong would use the original gift card to make purchases or would exchange it for cash.

On October 22, 2006, officers, alerted by Wal-Mart’s security,…