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I assume they bought physical gift cards in store.

Close - they bought one gift card, and then used Starbucks' website to transfer the money from Jonathan's card to their own.

So they hacked his account and stole money. I guess that's illegal... and will put you in front of a judge.

And how did he get the Card Security Code (PIN)?

As he states here in the google plus comment thread: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113956160418597123621/posts/MAqh...

"to transfer the money off the card I had to do it IRL, at a Starbucks location"

They either guessed or brute forced it. Both of which are essentially illegal computer hacking.

I don't know about you, but I'm not going to do business with someone (here the Founder of Freshplum) if they enjoy hacking credit accounts in their free time.

His reason for doing so is so poor that I worry about his ethics in other affairs.

But he specifically mentioned having to physically be at the Starbucks. Why would he do that if he had cracked the PIN? I think there's a way for them to transfer from one card to another, physically at the stores POS system. Can't think of anything else.

He went to the starbucks, first, to buy another gift card. Then he used the website to transfer funds.

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