Sure, if someone specifically wants a gift card for a particular store, then that at least falls under the "give a gift the person wants" idea. My wishlist is rather cumbersome, so if you looked at all, I'm pretty sure you never made it to the page that lists the gift cards from stores that I would accept, because there are stores I shop at regularly and wouldn't mind a little extra help in purchasing some of their more expensive items.

The gift card is still a scam by the store, but at least the recipient specifically wants it. When I was a kid, before gift cards, people who wanted to give me money but thought I was too young to handle my own just gave the money to my parents. Then either my parents held onto it for me and helped me with my purchases, or they bought something for me with the money because they knew what I would want.

In the case of your niece, to avoid the whole scam part, I would have tried to find out what items specifically that she wanted from that store, then ordered it for her, rather than buy a specific denomination that will probably not be the exact dollar amount of whatever item she ends up buying, resulting in either her parents kicking in the extra or the left-over money that I spent going to waste. In fact, that's what I'm doing for my nephew this year.