Man arrested for stealing Legos

proudmom

Mon, Nov 28 2005, 6:11 pm

A 40-year-old man has been arrested for stealing Legos from several Target stores in Oregon.HILLSBORO,Ore. (AP) -

William Swanberg was indicted by a Washington County grand jury on theft charges.

On Wednesday, agents of the U.S. Postal Inspector served a search warrant at Swanberg's home in Reno, Nevada. To haul away the evidence, the agents were forced to rent a 20-foot truck.

Police say Swanberg had been selling the stolen Legos on a Web site called "bricklink.com."

The site is similar to eBay, except it's only for Legos.

According to what Target officials told investigators, Swanberg has stolen nearly $200,000 worth of Legos from their stores. Records from bricklink.com indicate Swanberg has sold $600,000 worth of the toy bricks in the last three years.

He's being held in the Washington County Jail on a $250,000 bail.

Bar codes switched
Swanberg is accused of switching the bar codes on Lego boxes, replacing an expensive one with a cheaper label, said Detective Troy Dolyniuk, a member of the Washington County fraud and identity theft enforcement team.

Target officials contacted police after noticing the same pattern at their stores in the five western states. A Target security guard stopped Swanberg at a Portland-area store Nov. 17, after he bought 10 boxes of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon set.

In his parked car, detectives found 56 of the Star Wars sets, valued at $99 each, as well as 27 other Lego sets. In a laptop found inside Swanberg’s car, investigators also found the addresses of numerous Target stores in the Portland area, their locations carefully plotted on a mapping software.

Records of the Lego collector’s Web site, Bricklink.Com, show that Swanberg has sold nearly $600,000 worth of Legos since 2002, said Dolyniuk.

Lego’s Danish founder Ole Kirk Christiansen named the famous bricks in 1934 by fusing two Danish words, “leg” and “godt” meaning “play well.”

Children across the world spend 5 billion hours every year playing with Lego bricks, available in 90 different colors, according to the company’s Web site.

© 2005 The Associated Press.