Look, I have many fond memories of Legos from my childhood. Heck, I even bought a 1000-piece set recently to jack around with during dull times [bummer side note: no wheels included, so I can’t build two Lego cars to repeatedly crash into each other]. Vodkapundit‘s Stephen Green really digs them.
Still, with that disclaimer, I have never let a single Lego brick lead me to a life of crime.
Agents had to use a 20-foot truck to cart away the evidence from a suspect’s house — mountains of Lego bricks.
William Swanberg, 40, of Reno, Nev., was indicted by a grand jury Wednesday, accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of the colorful plastic building blocks from Target stores.
Target estimates Swanberg stole up to $200,000 worth of the brick sets from stores in Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California. The Legos were resold on the Internet, officials said.
Attempts to reach Swanberg at a county jail, where he was being held on $250,000 bail, were unsuccessful. It wasn’t known if he had an attorney.
Swanberg is accused of switching the bar codes on Lego boxes, replacing an expensive one with a cheaper label, said Detective Troy Dolyniuk of the Washington County fraud and identity theft team. Police haven’t said how he was able to manipulate codes.
Records of the Lego collector’s Web site, Bricklink.com, show that Swanberg has sold about $600,000 worth of Legos since 2002, Dolyniuk said.
If found guilty, the man should be sentenced to a supervised, brick-by-brick construction of his own cell.