aaaah. I didn't know you could use a Gift Card Online. That makes more sense to me now.
Still... it seems they could track it down with so much information in their database. OK... so they have to narrow it down from 9999 cards. Surely, they can see which ones were used at store #5799 at 11:01 am on 12/14/2006 for a purchase of $49.32. There should be some way to search the database and narrow it down... surely.
*They* can - somebody somewhere within the system that did the transaction, evidently Murphy Oil - but who would that be? At any rate, they can't prove it was your dad who used or owned the card.