The Brown County Sheriff’s Office shared the following press release late Friday afternoon:

On Thursday, Dec. 14, Sgt. Chris Angel made a traffic stop on Hwy. 183 South on a passenger vehicle occupied by two male subjects. The driver was identified as Xiuhui Chen, and the front passenger was identified as Junyu Zhou.

There was a language barrier between Sgt. Angel and Xiuhui. However, the passenger spoke with Sgt. Angel and stated that they had been to Houston on a sightseeing tour and were headed to Amarillo to pick up a friend before heading back to California.

During the traffic stop, reasonable suspicion was developed, and a consent search was conducted on the vehicle. Inside the vehicle there were over 5,000 gift cards with a face value total that has been determined to be over $250,000. These gift cards were from Target, The Apple Store and prepaid Visa Cards.

The local FBI was contacted to assist with this on-going investigation.