MARYSVILLE — A Marysville man who used gift cards to defraud Target and its customers of more than $700,000 is facing five years in prison.
The scheme was carried out between May and December 2017, affecting people across five states: Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and Colorado.
Jeffery Mann, 30, was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. He also was ordered to pay $215,000 in restitution. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud in March.
“(Mann) is obviously talented and used that talent to break the law,” Judge James Robart said. “… This is not a victimless crime — it impacts real people.”
Four other people participated in Mann’s fraud ring, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
They’ve already been sentenced: Corey Mosey received 3 years and 10 months, Joshua Newman got 3 years and 2 months and Derrick Quintana 2 years and 3 months. Kennady Weston is fulfilling her sentence through federal drug court.
The four were ordered to pay an additional $263,000 in restitution.
To carry out the scheme, Mann had figured out the algorithm for the cards’ barcodes. He would use a group of barcodes to predict the codes on other cards, which would then be bought and loaded by unsuspecting customers.
He and his co-conspirators would call customer service to check the balance on the compromised cards, and then use them to purchase goods and more gift cards. Those would often be sold for Bitcoin on an internet marketplace, U.S. Attorney Brian Moran explained in a statement.
In one case, in November 2017, they used about 180 stolen gift card numbers to buy $6,900-worth of products at the Southcenter Mall Target in Tukwila.
“When the actual cardholders later tried to use their gift cards, they discovered that they had zero balance,” explained the U.S. Attorney’s Office statement.
The scheme came to end in December 2017, when Target changed its gift card system in response to the fraud.
Mann was originally arrested at a Kirkland motel in November 2017. Kirkland police discovered his plot when they searched his car, a stolen Subaru, and found a host of evidence: receipts from Target, dozens and dozens of gift cards, laminating film, printer ink and blank gift card stock.
Zachariah Bryan: 425-339-3431; zbryan@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @zachariahtb.
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