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Police in Springfield, Oregon, built their massive Lego bust brick by brick. By the time their sting was over, they had amassed such a mountain of the sought after sets that they flew a drone overhead for an aerial shot. Every one of the boxes was in the original packaging and every one of them had been swiped from local retailers.
Deep discount Lego
As related by the Springfield Police Department, the Brick Builders shop in Eugene, Oregon, was a fence for stolen Lego. They recovered “more than 4,150 swiped sets of the plastic building-blocks.”
They estimate the retail value at roughly $200,000. That’s just a little over the state’s $1,000 legal theft limit.
Prosecutors aren’t going to have any problem proving the charges. Ammon Henrikson owns the shop which sells nothing but Lego. He doesn’t get the sets from the manufacturer. He doesn’t get them through any legitimate channels.
After a three-month investigation, Oregon police recovered 4,153 Lego sets, totaling over $200,000, from a store in Eugene. https://t.co/gKnCrtqZYz pic.twitter.com/My3UAW1HzP
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) July 14, 2024
Police thoroughly documented the way he’s been “knowingly buying the unopened sets from crooks who pilfered them from nearby chain stores such as Target, Fred Meyer and Walmart.”
Henrikson was so confidant in his methods and casual about doing business that he allegedly instructed “the suspects to snatch specific Lego sets from the retail stores.”
The selection of kits is extensive. “Among the stolen items could be seen high-quality branded sets.” For instance, the souped-up DeLorean car from “Back to the Future.”
Sell for hundreds
Police note that the custom ambulance from “Ghostbusters” can easily fetch $230. Another highly collectible Lego set is the Millenium Falcon from “Star Wars.”
Police ran their sting operation for a full three months before swooping in and seizing the stolen goods.
Cops literally watched “thieves rob stores of high-priced Lego sets — then head straight to Brick Builders.” It was such a regular occurrence the store needed a revolving door.
Oregon Cops make a MASSIVE Lego theft bust, and recover $200K worth of stolen toys.. 😲‼️ pic.twitter.com/E5ev5iniAA
— DramaAlert (@DramaAlert) July 10, 2024
Sergeant Kyle Potter described it all to the press. From what they had on video tape, the jury should have no problem figuring out Henrikson’s fate.
“We would watch people go into the store with Lego and come out with cash in hand.” Since Oregon is one of the states which decriminalized crimes like shoplifting, the thieves were happy to cooperate. “At that point we would stop people, we’d talk to them and they’d tell us exactly what they did.” Not only did they spill their guts, “they were usually disgruntled on the amount of cash they got.”
It was “pennies on the dollars for what it was actually worth.” The thieves used the cash to buy drugs. With stolen Lego stacked “more than five feet high and stretching dozens of feet outside of the police department,” Henrikson and his partner Albert Nash were charged with organized retail theft.
