More than $115,000 stolen from Target gift cards in elaborate scheme

Jaymes Allen Clark, 34, leaves a van at the federal courthouse in San Antonio. Clark, a former asset protection leader for Target, is charged with trafficking in unauthorized access devices and conpiracy. Jaymes Allen Clark, 34, leaves a van at the federal courthouse in San Antonio. Clark, a former asset protection leader for Target, is charged with trafficking in unauthorized access devices and conpiracy. Photo: John Davenport / San Antonio Express-News Photo: John Davenport / San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close More than $115,000 stolen from Target gift cards in elaborate scheme 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

When customers began complaining in November that the preloaded Target gift cards they bought or received showed balances of zero, an inquiry led to an unusual place: an assets protection leader for Target in San Antonio.

Jaymes Allen Clark, 34, an honorably discharged Marine who worked at the Target store in the 18000 block of Blanco Road for more than two years, is now a former Target employee and has been charged with trafficking in unauthorized access devices and conspiracy.

He was ordered held without bail after a lengthy hearing Wednesday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Chestney, who also found federal agents had enough probable cause to arrest him late last month.

Court records filed by the U.S. Secret Service allege Clark spent a lot of his work time logging into an internal Target gift card database and provided information from it to at least two accomplices, who used the info and a cellphone app to get more Target or iTunes gift cards that they could redeem at cash value.

Target estimated its losses at more than $115,000, the court records said.

Target told the Secret Service that the retailer’s investigation found Clark spent more time on the gift card system than any other employee in the country with similar permission to access the database, used to search for and identify activated Target gift cards,

“He had permission, but he was far, far more active on this system than any other manager,” Secret Service special agent Jeff Francis testified Wednesday. “He was Number 1 in searching on the system.”

Clark’s lawyer, Guillermo Lara, nearly persuaded the judge to let his client out on bond, until the judge was told prosecutors in Brazos County planned to revoke the deferred adjudication probation Clark received for a 2011 drug possession charge in College Station. It was unclear Wednesday why Target hired Clark despite that felony case.

The alleged accomplices’ identities have been blacked out by prosecutors in a federal affidavit outlining the Target case, but it says one of the two was arrested in December by police in Goodyear, Arizona, near Phoenix. The third suspect was arrested in August in Roseville, California.

The pair’s state cases were halted as the federal investigation began just in the past month. The pair have since been released or bonded out and are now being sought on federal charges, records show.

Once Target became aware of the gift card problem, the retailer began flagging any high-dollar gift card purchases, and that led to the suspect arrested in Arizona, Francis testified.

Police seized a cellphone from that suspect, and a forensic examination of that phone in July led to Clark.

On the phone were screen shots of Clark’s workstation at the Blanco Road store, according to Francis. Also on the phone were pictures of two shoplifting suspects that Clark had detained at the Target in San Antonio, further tying Clark to the Arizona suspect, Francis testified.

According to Francis, Clark scanned Target’s database for newly activated gift cards and provided account numbers to his accomplices. The unnamed suspects would take a gift card number and enter it into “a phone app that takes any number and turns it into a bar code,” Francis said.

He said the alleged accomplices would then put the bar code on the phone to a register scanner at Target to purchase iTunes gift cards, or other Target gift cards, and “essentially clean that first gift card.”

During its investigation, Target used “server logs” to identify what Clark was searching for and for how long. Then it shared its findings with the Secret Service.

“There were some instances where cards were activated one day in one part of the country and used later that same day somewhere else,” Francis testified.

Asked by prosecutor Tom Moore whether the victims are out their money, Francis said no.

“Once Target realized there was a problem, they made the victims whole,” Francis said, adding that Target ended up losing money as a result.

If convicted, Clark faces up to 15 years in prison.