Over $70,000 worth of Pokemon cards were allegedly stolen from Magic Madhouse, one of the largest collector card firms in the UK, and hidden at the home of the employee’s mother.
In trial this week, the warehouse employee was adjudged guilty. Kyriacos Christouwas, the subject in question, received a 16-month sentence with a suspension and was mandated to perform 175 hours of community work.
Pokemon cards have grown in popularity as a result of continuously rising prices on the open market over the past few years. As a consequence, there have been an increased number of scams, forgeries, and thefts.
The Pokemon Company has produced more cards in response to the increasing demand, but nothing appears to be able to reverse the price increase.
Evidently, Christou started out modestly. A few cards at a time at first, the warehouse worker gradually increased their thefts over the period of several months. Michael Duke, the proprietor of Magic Madhouse, told Kotaku that “he would steal cards out of boxes and put them in his pocket.”
“At the time, there was no shuttered television on the property, so if he was alone, he was taking advantage of the situation to steal items.”
Losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars were caused by the theft of boxes, packs, and playing cards. Duke said, “He went for the greater rarity goods. “A lot of marketing materials.”
Duke explains, “We have not quite completed classifying the entire spectrum because we were in the process of re-categorizing our cards, and we were midway through Pokemon.
He was originally looking at the cards that we had not yet finished classifying. Over time, Christou became more and more arrogant, snatching even cataloged cards.
Duke observed that “the stuff that was lacking was material that was out of print.” “Evolutions had vanished. They almost have four digits each.
Duke eventually installed cameras in the areas where the majority of the inventory had vanished. “I found the person stealing less than twelve hours later.”
