Thieves reportedly broke into a California card store and stole Pokémon Cards worth $15,000 in under 40 seconds. The masked suspects’ actions were captured on surveillance cameras, and the robbers are reportedly still on the loose. The perpetrators have been targeting Pokémon trading cards across many card stores in the U.S. A similar robbery took place in New Jersey last week.
$15K Pokémon cards stolen from California store
Pokémon Cards worth $15,000 were reportedly stolen from The Card Lab in Brentwood, California, in under a record 40 seconds. As per police statements, the masked suspects, dressed in black, were caught on CCTV cameras. They jumped over display cases at the card store on Saturday night and dumped the cards in giant plastic garbage bags.
After the robbery, the suspects drove off in a Nissan Altima and are still at large (via ABC News).
Ronnie Hackett, The Card Lab’s owner, who opened the store two months ago, revealed that the manager was on another level of the card store when the theft incident happened. Hackett said, “My first thought was ‘I hope that my employee was OK,’ and I was relieved to see that she was. And then I also just kind of wanted to see what the damage was, what damage was done.”
He added, “I’m relieved that she was not downstairs because that could have been way worse. But she was upstairs doing our end of the day protocol.”
Interestingly, the store was shut down to implement additional security measures in place. It seems like the robbers took advantage of that situation. As mentioned previously, a similar burglary took place in New Jersey last week. Similar masked thieves robbed Big Pack Hobby Shop in Rochelle Park, New Jersey, on Thursday.
As per the police, the thieves smashed through the glass door and made off with a loot of $40,000 to $50,000 worth of cards and merchandise. That burglary too took place within minutes, under two minutes to be precise, and was caught on camera.
