Little Rock, AR – (Arkansas Democrat Gazette) – March 19, 2025 – A retired deputy U.S. marshal who worked much of his career based in Jonesboro pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to one count of bribery of a public official.
According to an online story in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Robert Scott (Bob) Clark, who served as a deputy U.S. marshal for 30 years, from 1991 until 2021, was charged and pleaded guilty to one count of bribery contained in a criminal information filed Wednesday in federal court.
The newspaper’s story says, according to Clark’s plea agreement, he admitted to U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr. that he had solicited some $77,000 in bribes beginning sometime around February 2018 and continuing until his retirement from the U.S. Marshals Service in the Eastern District of Arkansas in December 2021.
The Democrat Gazette story said Clark admitted in court Wednesday to accepting approximately $77,000 in bribes from two bail bondsmen in exchange for providing them with phone toll records, law enforcement sensitive information and GPS location data by accessing confidential law enforcement database information and by submitting emergency information requests to cell phone providers under the Stored Communications Act and turning that information over to the two bondsmen in violation of federal law.
Over the course of about three years, the plea agreement said, Clark submitted false emergency information requests approximately 30 times, seeking information that could lead to the whereabouts of state defendants who had fled to assist the two bail bondsmen — identified in the document only as Bail Bondsman-1 and Bail Bondsman-2 — in locating them, despite doing so being a violation of federal law.
The newspaper’s story said the document shows Clark admitted to often submitting false statements to mobile phone providers, such as representing a request as being in connection with a child kidnapping or other emergency, bypassing the requirement to channel the request through the U.S. Marshals Service headquarters.
When he returns for sentencing later this year, following completion of a presentence investigation report by the U.S. Probation Office, Clark faces a possible maximum prison term under U.S. sentencing statutes of 15 years in prison, a fine of up to $231,000 — three times the $77,000 he admitted to receiving in bribes — and up to three years supervised release.
This story was written by Dale Ellis. Ellis covers the federal courthouse beat for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.