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A T.J. Maxx clerk who helped stage an armed robbery at his own store in Venice, Florida, on Nov. 17, 2009, received a one-year jail term, while two accomplices were sentenced to eight years in prison.

Mathew Graffin, then 19, had worked at the store for about three years, according to Venice police. Police said he let two masked accomplices in through the front door as he pretended to lock up for the night.

The men were Joshua Michael Rose, 19, a stocker who had only been on the job about two weeks, and James Paul Rogers Jr., 21, a Hickory Farms employee who did not work at the store. The two carried what turned out to be fake guns. Rose vaulted the checkout lanes, ordered employees and customers to the floor and bound three workers' wrists with zip ties, while Rogers ran toward the back of the store, according to an arrest affidavit. Graffin was ordered behind the register so it would look like he, too, was a victim.

The plan fell apart when another employee slipped out a rear door and tripped an alarm. Rose and Rogers ran out the back before officers arrived, but responding police believed a hostage situation was underway and surrounded the store for nearly four hours. Only frightened employees and roughly 15 customers remained inside, including the wife and mother-in-law of a Sarasota County sheriff's deputy, authorities said. No one was hurt and nothing was taken.

Detectives initially treated Graffin as a victim, but tips from citizens, including a man who said he had gone to the suspects' shared home to buy a handgun from Rose, pointed investigators back at all three. The men lived together about a mile from the store in Nokomis. Police said the motive was money for rent.

All three were arrested about a week later and each charged with three counts of armed kidnapping and one count of armed robbery with a firearm. Graffin cooperated with detectives and agreed to testify against Rose and Rogers, according to Assistant State Attorney Elizabeth Scanlan.

Coworkers who had continued working alongside Graffin and Rose in the days after the robbery, unaware either man was involved, said they felt betrayed once the truth came out. Rose and Rogers were sentenced in December 2010 to eight years in prison. Graffin received a one-year jail term under his plea agreement.