Lego Klepto's Caught With 200k Worth Of Blocks (1 Viewer)

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ramblar

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Four Arrested After $200k Worth of Legos Found in Theft Investigation

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Aw, shucks. What's four adults gotta do around here to have a little Lego fun?
AZFamily.com reports police in Phoenix, Arizona have arrested four chill dudes—Garry Fairbee, 35; Tarah Dailey, 33; Melissa Dailey, 34; and Troy Koehler, 40—accused of hatching and carrying out a massive scheme to steal pricey Lego sets from local Toys "R" Us stores. "To play with?" you're probably wondering. No! To joylessly resell, for profit.
From AZFamily:
They are accused of removing the theft detection devices from the Lego sets, causing damage to the packaging. In most incidents, they put the Lego sets in either large gift bags and then in shopping carts, or inside shopping carts and then covered with the gift bags. The suspects would then flee the business without setting off the security alarm.
Police had reportedly been working on the case for more than four months when detectives used surveillance video to identify Fairbee and Tarah Dailey. They discovered the pair was selling the stolen Lego sets to Troy Koehler, who would then either sell the sets online, or return them to Toys "R" Us stores for a refund.
The group was caught in action on Thursday night when police followed Fairbee and Melissa Dailey to a meeting place where they sold stolen Legos to Koehler. AZFamily reports that after obtaining search warrants on the residences of Fairbee and Koehler, as well as Koehler's storage lockers, approximately 18 pallets of Legos were recovered:
It is estimated that the recovered Legos have a retail value of around $200,000 of which at least $40,000 is believed to have been stolen. The rest of the Legos may have been purchased legitimately, or obtained fraudulently. Evidence from this investigation shows only $40,000 in stolen merchandise.
AZFamily reports the schemers are facing charges of "organized retail theft, trafficking in stolen property, fraudulent schemes, and illegal control of an enterprise."
Hmm. But who will play them in The Lego Movie: Not the Fun One, the One About the Weird, Complicated Scheme?​
 

ramblar

Forum Veteran
We can't find a missing airliner, we can't keep looters from destroying a town, but DAMMIT TO HELL, our Lego's are safe!
 

ramblar

Forum Veteran
Now it's getting weird, I was looking at the Huffington Post and stumbled across this little nugget. I bet the Lego Thieves had wish they knew about this before they were arrested.

BBC News recently reported on a pretty rad story out of Cornwall, UK. Way back in 1997 a shipping container carrying 4.8 million Lego pieces fell into the sea, roughly 20 miles from Land’s End. 17 years later the tide is still washing loads of Lego onto beaches around Cornwall. There have also been discoveries of Lego in Devon, Ireland and Wales.
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Lego Lost at Sea Facebook

The container ship carrying the Lego, the Tokio Express, “was hit by a wave described by its captain as a ‘once in a 100-year phenomenon,’ tilting the ship 60 degrees one way, then 40 degrees back.” Ironically, many of the Lego pieces were nautical-themed, from the Aquazone line. For years, children and adults have been combing the Cornwall coasts in search of the little plastic bricks. Local Tracey Williams has even created a Facebook page that chronicles her findings, it’s super-cutely called “Lego Lost at Sea.”
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Lego Lost at Sea Facebook

Since 1997, those pieces could have drifted 62,000 miles, he says. It's 24,000 miles around the equator, meaning they could be on any beach on earth. Theoretically, the pieces of Lego could keep going around the ocean for centuries.
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Lego Lost at Sea Facebook

The Lego Lost At Sea facebook page was created by British writer and intrepdi beachcomber, Tracey Williams, "who first started to discover pieces of sea themed Lego on beaches around her family home in South Devon, England in the late 1990s." Currently, she lives in Cornwall, "near where the shipwrecked Lego still washes up daily." Tracey is also invovled in the beach-cleaning group Newquay Beach Care.
These Lego dragons are just two of 33,941 Lego dragons. They washed up in Bigbury on Sea, South Devon, England in the late-90s.
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Lego Lost at Sea Facebook

This epic Lego shipwreck is also providing a lot of insight into the movement of ocean currents and the tides.
"The most profound lesson I've learned from the Lego story is that things that go to the bottom of the sea don't always stay there. Tracking currents is like tracking ghosts - you can't see them. You can only see where flotsam started and where it ended up.” -US oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer
Williams even wonders whether the "Lego armada" could have even been swept as far as Australia:
Patricia sent us this picture of a Lego flipper she found washed up in Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne sometime in the last five years. We don't know for certain whether this is from the Tokio Express or not but according to oceanographer Dr Curtis Ebbesmeyer 'it's possible that after 17 years, a Lego flipper could have made it to Australia'.
According to the Beachcombers’ Alert, (2,2 1997) “The Lost Lego Pieces Cargo included:”
Toy kits - Divers, Aquazone, Aquanauts, Police, FrightKnights, WildWest, RoboForce TimeCruisers, Outback, Pirates

Spear guns (red and yellow) - 13,000 items

Black octopus - 4,200

Yellow life preserver - 26,600

Diver flippers (in pairs: black, blue, red) - 418,000

Dragons (black and green) - 33,941

Brown ship rigging net - 26,400

Daisy flowers (in fours - white, red, yellow) - 353,264

Scuba and breathing apparatus (grey) - 97,500
Total of 4,756,940 Lego pieces lost overboard in a single container
Estimated 3,178,807 may be light enough to have floated

Here's Williams' Lego ID guide for the pieces she's found thus far:
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Lego Lost at Sea Facebook

While it’s pretty cool that there’s tons of Lego washing up on beaches to the delight of children and adults who love finding little plastic treasure, there are some major environmental concerns with over 4 million pieces of plastic floating around the ocean and washing ashore.
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Lego Lost at Sea Facebook

Read more on BBC News.
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Lego Lost at Sea Facebook
 
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