The Oregonian | By Aimee Green | April 27, 2026
Jeffrey Buckmeyer stepped into the Target next to Washington Square mall to ask an employee at the electronics counter for help freeing up memory on his iPhone.
What happened next plagued the rest of the 43-year-old’s life: The employee claimed he saw young naked and bound girls — along with Buckmeyer in an aroused state — on Buckmeyer’s phone and alerted police. Days later, Buckmeyer was handcuffed in the parking lot of his Tigard apartment complex, his home was searched, his electronic devices were seized and word of the investigation spread to his landlord, his business partner and his extended family.
A weight hung over him for months, even after the FBI returned his devices and quietly dropped the case without filing any criminal charges, having found nothing.
Buckmeyer hired a civil attorney but died of cardiac arrest later that same year. And it was a long 6 ½-year road with a few legal bumps until the case made it to trial earlier this month. After a five-day trial, a Multnomah County Circuit Court jury ordered Target to pay the dead man’s estate $150,000 for the worker’s intentional infliction of emotional distress.
On top of that, in reaching its verdict, the jury concluded that the child pornography allegations had to have been false, said Portland civil attorney Michael Fuller, who represented Buckmeyer’s estate.
Fuller said the verdict comes as vindication to Buckmeyer’s name and family.
“This trial was a referendum on the reputation of Jeff Buckmeyer, in my opinion,” Fuller told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “That’s why we did it. … We felt like an injustice was done. And we kind of viewed this as Jeff’s dying wish.”
Buckmeyer’s former romantic partner, Patty Anselmo, said Buckmeyer was laser-focused on clearing his name in the final months of his life. Anselmo also is the mother of Buckmeyer’s child and despite their split considered Buckmeyer her “very good friend.”
“When this happened, it consumed him,” Anselmo said. “It was all he could talk about. He was always in that rattled state of mind.”
In Target’s defense, Grant Stockton, a lawyer for the retailer, contended that Target wasn’t liable for any distress Buckmeyer had endured because Target had believed the allegations against Buckmeyer were made in “good faith” — and Oregon law specifically shields “good faith” reports of child abuse from lawsuits.
Stockton told jurors that Target had an absolute obligation to report suspected child abuse when it learned of it.
Target also contended that Target wasn’t liable because the electronics counter employee was a contractor who worked for another company, not Target.
Nonetheless, a judge allowed the lawsuit to proceed against Target under the argument that the employee — who wore a shirt with a Target logo — was “an agent” of Target and indistinguishable as a contractor to the general public.
A Target spokesperson didn’t return The Oregonian/OregonLive’s requests for comment.
Buckmeyer’s nightmare unfolded on July 24, 2018. The lifelong Portland area resident with no criminal history had brought his iPhone to the electronics counter at Target located at 9009 S.W. Hall Boulevard to ask a cellphone technician for help deleting a large folder of photos of items he sold on eBay. Buckmeyer, who worked as an insurance salesman, ran the small eBay venture as a side business.
According to court papers and store surveillance video, Buckmeyer handed his phone to the tech, who claimed that he opened a file on it labeled “business” with the more than 1,000 photos. After viewing 15 to 20 of them, the worker returned the phone to Buckmeyer and gave no indication of what he saw, according to the court file.
The worker later told police that he saw photos of multiple naked girls under the age of 10, of different ethnicities, and some of them were tied up. The worker also said Buckmeyer was next to some of them with an erection visible.
According to court papers, the worker immediately notified Target staff, who were able to pull Buckmeyer’s name and information from a credit card purchase he made and his license plate from video recorded by a surveillance camera in the parking lot.
Two weeks later, concerned they had just been tipped off to a serial child predator, FBI agents stopped Buckmeyer in the parking lot of his apartment building. The agents executed a search warrant on his home, where he lived alone, and seized his cellphone and two laptops. Buckmeyer wasn’t jailed or formally charged.
Anselmo, who at the time lived in California with the 15-year-old daughter they shared, said she remembers Buckmeyer calling her. He sounded nothing like the “calm, cool, collected person” she had always known him to be.
“His voice was just shaking,” Anselmo recounted. “I said, ‘Are you crying? Are you OK?’ He had to catch his breath. He goes ‘No, something awful has happened.’”
After filling in Anselmo, Buckmeyer was adamant that the allegations were fabricated.
“He goes, ‘So you don’t believe it then?’” Anselmo recalled. “I was like, ‘Absolutely not. … Of course I’m on your side.’”
Buckmeyer hired a criminal attorney in an attempt to stave off any charges. In emails that later became exhibits during the civil trial, Buckmeyer said he had shelled out $12,000 to cover legal expenses and replace his phone and laptop.
He also said he missed visitations with his daughter. Anselmo told The Oregonian/OregonLive that she and Buckmeyer were afraid neighbors would call police if they saw a minor going in or out of his apartment, given the investigation against him.
Buckmeyer wrote in an email to his criminal defense lawyer that his apartment complex managers knew about the investigation because the FBI had contacted them, “causing me embarrassment.” He said he wanted to find a new place to live. But he wrote that he worried his current apartment managers, whom he had to list as references, might tell any prospective apartment managers about the child pornography investigation.
“These charges have ruined my life in many ways,” said Buckmeyer, in the email.
Four months after the FBI seized them, agents returned his electronic devices in January 2019 and dropped the case.
“He knew how stigmatizing those allegations were and also how false they were,” said Graham Fisher, Buckmeyer’s criminal defense lawyer. “It was emotionally, psychologically and physically taxing on him.”
Those who knew Buckmeyer said the end of the criminal investigation came as a relief.
“But it just wasn’t enough,” Anselmo said. “He was labeled a demon.”
Buckmeyer hired Fuller, the Portland civil attorney, to represent him in a lawsuit to win a verdict clearing his name. But soon after, in April 2019, he died of cardiac arrest.
Anselmo then picked up the case by acting as Buckmeyer’s personal representative in the lawsuit, with any winnings going toward their daughter.
Buckmeyer had a history of heart problems, and he wrote about how the stress of the allegations was making his heart condition worse. Though Fuller didn’t allege in the lawsuit that the allegations caused Buckmeyer’s death, he believes the overwhelming stress played a role.
Anselmo does, too.
“I certainly think this pressed the ‘fast forward’ button for Jeff,” Anselmo said.
Fuller said there may never be an answer to why the electronics counter worker raised alarms about Buckmeyer, who was a stranger.
“It was never determined,” Fuller said. “It could have been the same reason people call in a bomb scare. Or the guy could have not liked the customer. There are just a hundred reasons … that you could accuse someone falsely of this.”
During the trial, Buckmeyer’s accuser testified that he had seen child pornography on Buckmeyer’s phone, but he couldn’t remember many of the details he’d originally shared with police.
The Oregonian/OregonLive isn’t naming the worker because he wasn’t charged with any wrongdoing, including the crime of making a false report. Fuller said the worker no longer works for the contractor at Target and that the worker said he left for a reason unrelated to Buckmeyer.
As part of the lawsuit, Fuller said he had to prove to jurors that there wasn’t actually child pornography on Buckmeyer’s phone.
Fuller said he called three expert witnesses in electronic forensics who testified if Buckmeyer had erased illicit photos, they would have been able to find evidence of them. Fuller also said that the experts confirmed that if Buckmeyer had been a technological whiz and used software to scrub all evidence of photos, the experts would have found evidence of that software.
“The experts testified that all they do is bust people who have this type of perversion,” Fuller said. “They said these devices do not appear in any way to belong to someone who in any way is interested in any of this stuff. It’s as clean as anything you’d ever see.”
On Friday, The Oregonian/OregonLive asked the FBI’s Portland office if its investigators thought there was any evidence that Buckmeyer possessed child pornography or abused children. A spokesperson said the agency is “unable to comment on cases/investigations that did not result in federal criminal charges.”
But, the spokesperson added, “The existence or non-existence of charges tells our side of the story.”
The lawsuit had sought $4.5 million. Fuller asked for about half that during closing arguments. But by a vote of 9-3, the jury awarded far less. Fuller and Anselmo both said they understand: Money won’t help heal the person who was so badly harmed.
But Anselmo said the verdict “means everything” to those who knew Buckmeyer.
“Having some black cloud placed over him unfairly, it just left a mark on who he was,” Anselmo said. “We were never sure if it was going to get cleared up. And now we can hold our heads up and say very clearly that this was completely fabricated. This was a lie.”
