In local news resembling an Ocean’s 11 spinoff aimed at eight year olds or the B plot in Home Alone: Lost In New York, an interstate consortium of highly skilled toy store thieves is believed to be responsible for the recent spate of Lego heists which have befuddled up to four toy store owners across New South Wales and Victoria.
Targets have included Toy Kingdom in Fawkner, Victoria, robbed twice in April and in May, Toyworld in Seymour, Victoria, hit twice in May, Toyworld in Macksville, New South Wales, robbed twice in October and in November of last year, and Toyworld, Benalla in Victoria, robbed during Christmas.
So far over $30,000 in Lego product has been stolen.
Werner Baumann, owner of Toyworld in Seymour, said that the perpetrators were intelligent. “These people are very smart in what they’re doing,” he told Fairfax. “They understand how business works and how to break into places without leaving any evidence.”
Rowena Davies, a senior staff member of Toyworld in Macksville, NSW, concurred. “You have to go through someone’s backyard to get in, and they also came with an angle grinder to cut the thick bars on the door,” she said.
Toyworld Benalla store owner Ian Davies said the heist was the work of more than one person. “Because it was just after Christmas, we’d sold most of our Lego by this point,” he said. “But if you put [the boxes] flat from the ground up, it would be about 2.5 metres high – you’d need at least two to three people to carry it all out.”
“It seems like they’re picking easier targets [than big stores] like Kmart – smaller businesses are unable to have the same level of security as larger stores,” he continued. “They definitely knew what they were doing.”
Everyone else though?
Via The Age
