RENO NEVADA NEWS * Reno Real Estate Market News Reno, Nevada - 40-year-old held for pilfering
Lego sets worth
thousands |
Posted on : Tue, 30 Nov 2005 00:02:00 GMT
| Author : Brian Holmes News Category : General
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This one's no child's play even if Lego
bricks are involved. A 40-year-old man in Reno,
Nevada, has been charged with stealing Lego
brick sets worth around US$ 200,000. However, it
wasn't passion for the game but the more basic
greed of financial gains that drove William
Swanberg, charged with two counts of felony
theft and one count of attempted felony theft,
to commit the crime.
The colorful plastic
bricks, which are a hit with children, were
stolen from Oregon, Arizona, California, Utah
and Nevada stores of the retailer Target.
Swanberg's modus operandi was changing the bar
codes of the boxes containing the Lego bricks
and passing off expensive sets for cheaper ones,
said Troy Dolyniuk, a Washington County
detective. How Swanberg managed to switch the
bar codes is not clear.
The con would
then put the bricks up for sale over the
Internet. Since 2002, he managed to sell Lego
sets worth around US$ 600,000, records obtained
from Bricklink.com, a site for ardent Lego
collectors, have shown.
Swanberg was nabbed,
when on November 17, he was heading out of a
Target store in Portland after buying 10 Star
Wars Millennium Falcon sets. A security guard
stopped him at the exit and the police were
summoned. A search of Swanberg's his car
revealed 56 Star Wars sets and 27 other Lego toy
sets. In addition, a laptop retrieved from the
car showed addresses of other Target stores in
the area and their maps.
A grand jury in
Hillsboro in Portland has set a bail of US$
250,000 bail for Swanberg's release. The number
of Lego sets he stole was so huge that the US
Postal Inspector agents who scoured his
residence had to use a six-meter truck to seize
the stolen goods found there.
Lego sets,
available in 90 colors as bricks, gears and
mini-figures, were invented by Danish Ole Kirk
Christiansen in 1934. The game, which is
targeted towards children above the age of six
years, has millions of fans, including adults,
worldwide, spawning many Web sites meant for
collectors to swap, sell and buy rare Lego sets.
Christiansen coined the term 'Lego' from the
Danish phrase 'leg godt', which means 'play
well'.
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