SPRINGFIELD, Ore. — Police in Oregon have put together the case of the stolen Legos.
Springfield Police said in a news release on Facebook that the owner of the Brick Builders store was knowingly buying new, unopened sets of Legos that had been stolen from retailers.
Officers said that the alleged thieves would steal the Legos and then go directly to the store to exchange the sets for cash, usually for much less than the retail value of the sets. The money would then be used to buy and use illegal drugs.
The department said they worked with loss prevention investigators from Target, Fred Meyer, Barnes & Noble and Walmart to confirm that the sets that had been purchased by the reseller were stolen from their stores.
“We recently did a mission at the Target among other gateway stores, and we were finding that a bunch of people were stealing Lego sets ... some very high-end, expensive Lego sets,” Sgt. Kyle Potter told KVAL, “During our three-month investigation, we were watching people steal and go straight to Brick Builders with these stolen Legos. And we’d watch people go into the stores with the Legos and come out with cash in hand.”
Suspects told police that the staff at the Willamette Street store knew they had been stolen.
Potter told KVAL that the alleged thieves were upset that they weren’t getting full value for the sets so they worked with Springfield Police to bring down the alleged crime.
The investigation lasted three months, KOIN reported.
Police served a search warrant and recovered 4,153 Lego kits with a total value of more than $200,000.
Police shared drone video and images of some of the sets recovered appeared to include a large Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon ($849.99), AT-AT ($849.99), and R2-D2 ($239.99) from the Star Wars line, a Concorde plane ($199.99), the Upsidedown retired set from “Stranger Things,” the “Back to the Future” Delorian from the Icons series ($199.99) and thousands of other boxes.
They filled a U-Haul with all of the sets.
Brick Builders’ owner Ammon Henrikson and employee Albert Nash have been charged with organized retail theft and theft by receiving, KOIN reported.
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