Gotta Catch Em All: Pokémon Theft

Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.

Zaren Hey, Yes, over here.

I wasn't napping.

It's cool, it's fine.

I was to my eyes were awake.

It's my eyes are too small for this. You know it's ridiculous.

Yeah, I do. Thank god you asked me. Those over here just nap, not napping, waiting for you to ask me that you know the actor Oscar Isaac, Yeah, you like him podammer and in the Star Wars movies.

Yeah?

Also, uh was it but the cat and the in one of my there you go, Davis? Okay, so he's an actual, real musician. Yeah, not just.

Llewell and Davis be saying on the on the soundtrack. Yeah, he's good, He's really good.

Did you know he used to be in bands?

Really?

Yeah?

You should see that. He was in SKA bands, waits sco.

Bands with great names like Petrified Frogs and Closet Heterosexuals. Oh god, the worms.

But also they're like fifteen people on stage?

Is a sad Elizabeth answer. That question answers itself. So also, though he was successful as a ska band artist, he was the lead singer. In case you wanted wondering where he was not in like the horn section. Yeah, he's up front, knees up. Yeah. So uh. He actually opened for Green Day and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones when he was a member of the group The Blinking Underdogs.

The Blinking Underdogs. The nineties were a wild time. I think everyone was in a SKA band, whether they knew it or not. That was in tune.

I didn't even know.

I found out.

Yeah, I saw pictures. I was like, what am I doing on stage? Later?

Yeah, that is ridiculous. I love that he was in a SKO band. But you know what else is ridiculous?

What else is religious? What else is ridiculous?

Pokemon? Pokemon is ridiculous.

Oh yeah, that yellow guy. Yeah totally.

This is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. No, you heard that, that's right. The Yakuzas sarin Ah, Yes, my friends go on. It's a criminal organization. You didn't think would come up in our conversations about ridiculous crimes, not from you, No, well, not that they don't commit ridiculous crimes. They're just so murdery.

Yeah, it's tough one because of all the kind of.

Like the Italian and American mafias, or like outlaw biker gangs, which I love to talk about, but I can't love to hang out with. I love to be in one, but I you know, the Yakuza. I am going to talk to you about them today.

I'm so curious how you're going to avoid this parts.

Let's pretend that you've never heard of them. Okay, let me fill you in.

Is this a boy band?

I'm going a woman'splaining the Yakuza. Yes. So basically it's Japanese organized crime serena. Yeah. So the cops call them organized crime or violent groups is the term they use. They call themselves chivalrous organizations, gentlemen's club and like. For a while there they operated out of really well marked offices, and sometimes there were signs outside with the symbols of their trade.

Japanese opera lovers.

Like samurai swords or like a lantern, and like films cartoons made them out to be noble outlaws with his code of honor.

The Yuza were talking about about them.

Say it with me again. Yakuza yakuzza.

They do jacuzzi, but it's a little more.

Menacence adjacent jacuzzi adjacent Yakuza. They do have a very strict code, both for like hierarchy and for their conducts.

Okay, yes, I've heard this.

And many of them, many of them have sick ass tattoos all over their bodies. I've also heard this just now, just learning this. But you can't see them because they wear sick ass suits.

That's a good.

Yeah. They pull fraud, they run drugs and guns. They engage in human trafficking and murder for hire. It sounds like they have a large talk about it parties, a big one. Yeah, but you know, they also provide disaster relief after major earthquakes.

Oh, I'm just hearing about this now from you. This is interesting. It's like Fukushima you're talking about all.

That's the thing about. Yeah, the mafia and outlaw biker gangs, like they do stuff that supports their communities while also doing things that destroy their communities.

Oh, I like Capone with the free turkeys.

Yeah, Thanksgiving turkey giveaways and arson, Yeah, toy drives and drive bys.

There you go.

So in the nineteen sixties, there were hundreds of thousands of members of the Yakuza. Hundreds of thousands not true today, Wow, membership is way down.

Wow.

Last year just over twenty thousand. Whoa, Yeah, that's just a third of what it was twenty years ago.

Wow.

Yeah, so you didn't know that. It did not at all. And so part of it is that the cops really cracked down. Okay, So there was legislation.

I saw Black Rain with Michael Douglas. We should probably do something about it.

It's gone to the point where pointing.

Hello, it's a great movie.

So they passed legislation that bars members from opening bank accounts, renting apartments, buying cell phones, creating insurance.

So they did like the whole gang interdiction.

Thing radius and then older members were dying off of course, and you know it's the old debtor in jail thing and to.

Replace younger ones if you've got that with your bosses.

But the crime must go on. So what does an organization do when they don't have enough members to carry out the necessary criminal activity?

Elizabeth, This is a fascinating conunder. What does say a yak is a boss do when he doesn't have the necessary criminals to carry out his criminal operation enter the gig economy.

Yes, there's this thing to Couru. Here's how the Guardian newspaper characterizes them. Oh god quote formed by the characters for anonymous and fluid. The term to Couru refers and I know I'm not saying that correctly, and I heardy apologies to the Japanese refers to ad hoc groups formed to commit crimes where members often don't know each other,

We were just talking about that.

Yeah, so you got me thinking about it when you told the story of the dude who robbed the armored card. He tried to get away in the raft and the creek, and he later went on to counterfeit. So think of this episode as the spiritual sibling of our Batman episode, because it kind of came to me in much the same way. I've mentioned that I watched my nephew every Saturday, Yes, highlight of my week. As a result of this arrangement, I have a lot of toys in my house.

Shout out to your nephew.

Shout out to him, and for a while, they're the majority where Batman toys, and that remains true. Okay, but there's an up and comer, a little yellow fella real Pikachu.

Oh you entered that phase?

Did you? Did you know that, according to comic book dot com, pokem on is the highest grossing IP and intellectual property in the entertainment world.

Yeah, actually I did know that because it's it is so enormous.

It's huge. There are video games, cartoons and then the cars trading car backbone.

Of hats with a little like press the button and it flaps.

I mean the target audience is five to twelve. Okay, but you and I both know that people a lot older stick with it.

Yeah, you can be like a quadruple member of the target audience four times over.

Well, it's like and like Harry Potter, they do it when they should know better.

M h.

I am a known Harry Potter hater. Yes, I have not read a book or seen.

She hates Harry Potter.

But see, I've seen enough of this whole thing to pity adults who are into it. So I figure I got the furries after me, why not add the Harry Potter.

And you were ahead of the curve in the Harry Potter. I mean a lot of people are coming around regretting tattoos and so forth, and there you are just looking smart and you're not being smug about it.

I'd i am, but I just the lesson is to yeh, go on. So the corporate ownership structure of Pokemon is weird.

What is it?

Well, most ips are owned by one company usually, and Pokemon is actually jointly owned by three Nintendo, game Freak and then Creatures, and so game Freak does all the like main role playing games, which are then published by Nintendo exclusively for their consoles, and then Creatures does all the trading card games that they this TCGs is theyre called and then the related merch and they develop spinoff titles.

Oh, they do merchan cards.

So do you know where the name Pokemon comes from?

Hey on, I'm guessing from some kind of like we were really into Jamaica at the time, and we were like, oh, but we also really love eating poke. Why don't we put our two loves together poke and like, hame on a Pokemon from.

A poke a Hawaiian poke shop in Jamaica. Hey on, No, it's the original full name of the franchise's Pocket Monsters, Poke and Mond.

Totally.

There you go. And so if you use Pokemon as a noun, which I think you probably should, I don't know how.

To use it as I want to go Pokemon that meal over there? See those noodles about to be Pokemon up.

Singular and plural forms are the same, okay, And that goes and that goes for all the individual species names as well. So if you say one Pokemon or twelve Pokemon or one Pikachu and nine million p ka chew, I got you. Yeah, And the official pronunciation is Pokemon and then or you can also officially say pokemonkemon, or if you're a jerk like me, you like to irritate people, you can say Pokemon.

What if I just want to call it pokemon.

You can call it pokemon, poke, Pokemon. That's the new Okay, So that's the alternative that I needed more information, So I went to pokemon dot com and I read the Pokemon basics page for parents. Lord, here's what they say under what are Pokemon?

These are answers for parents. Yeah, they're trying to like get schooled on what their kids are too.

So they're like, hey, Siri, what are pokemon? Quote. In the world of Pokemon, Pokemon are creatures of all shapes and sizes who live alongside humans. People known as Pokemon trainers, form lasting friendships with their Pokemon partners, and as a team, they go on adventures trained to improve their skills and battle in friendly competitions. During their journeys, Pookemon grow and become more experienced, and even on occasion, evolve in just

What was it?

Yeahkuza, Oh hey, I'm just learning about that. Not very kid friendly, but just as most intellectual property aimed at kids these days, Pokemon has been co opted or never grown out of, by plenty of adults. And adults like to collect things, which is the goal of Pokemon, and they have jobs, so they have money, right, And you made that really a stude observation recently about collectors and people collecting things in order to hang on to the past and memory.

Oh I said that.

You did say that, and that holds true for Pokemon cars.

Okay, yeah, definitely I could see that.

Yeah. So when people collect things that gives them monetary value, sometimes rare things obviously have more worth. Pokemon cards no different.

And childhood things that you can buy like Arson Wells and Citizen Kane.

Yes, exactly, exactly. So. The most expensive Pokemon card ever sold was the nineteen ninety eight illustrator Pikachu card with a ten rating, and you covered that when we talked about the Bad Guy Collector. It was sold in twenty twenty two for five million, two hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars to Logan Paul guy the boxer Dinge no, the brother of the oh guy that's going to fight Mike Tyson. They both have such punchable face.

They're just one thing to me.

I hope that Mike Tyson hits Jake Paul so hard that it gives Logan Paul brain. That's what I'm hoping for.

Is that mean?

Is that too violent? What's amazing? I am in the summer of dark Elizabeth. I'm noticing I've turned really I may no friends anymore. And when the world eases up, I'm going to go back to being super nice. So that I'm certified boogeyman, certified psychopath right now? Oh yeah, anyway, Logan Paul. So, he bought a Pokemon card for more than five million dollars, and that's an anomaly in terms of pricing. That's not like, Yeah, the next highest value

Oh of course, Yeah, that Shadowless Sharzar.

Yeah, that whole thing. So that's March twenty twenty two for four hundred and twenty thousand dollars for twenty bro. But another card like Smoking, also rated ten, sold in February of this year for just one hundred and sixty eight thousands.

The price is going down.

That one, it was, but not really. But it's still not ages five to twelve mon, No, not at all. It's just a bad investment. So back to the Yakuza, the boat of cards. I don't think they particularly cared about the Pokemon what cards. No, they cared about stealing something valuable there, and they weren't super fan.

They weren't like cultural protectors.

No, they didn't have Pikachu tattoos in the sleeve. Yeah, so they cause they didn't concern themselves with petty crime, but the to Koryu they were pulling bigger jobs now, and that left people like Keita Saito doing things like stealing Pokemon cards and not half a mill cards, sixteen hundred dollars worth of cards?

What? Yeah, and this is one of the gig workers.

No, this is a yakuza. Oh, actually yakuza. The guy I'm talking about, he's not the Keita Saito, who's the Japanese actor who was in Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Okay, he's the Keita Saito who is the leader of the Teknagawa Gang.

Oh, the Tokenawa Gang.

Yes, and that's a faction of the second largest yukuza syndicate, the Sumyoshi Kai.

Ah see, I only know the Tokenagawa from the Shogun era. But yeah, well this is I'm kidding.

So how the mighty have fallen? Yeah, telling Spectator magazine said, quote, it's as if Don Corleone had been reduced to running a shell game. Watch the ball which Kep is in under on some New York Backstreet man.

So uh, showing like fraudulent olive oil.

Get Tokyo Police announced the arrest of Saito earlier this year. Back in twenty twenty two, he broke into a home. Twenty nine items were stolen during the robbery, and that included twenty five valuable pokemonk and some lunch money. Yeah, basically, And they also arrested another guy in connection with the break in. He wasn't tied to Yakuza, but it makes me wonder if he was one of the gig workers.

Yeah, he's still a candy dish.

Yeah. So the cops are still looking for a couple other guys involved. But the big takeaway, thank you for.

Ask what is the big takeaway, Elizabeth?

It's the Yakuza lieutenant got busted for trying to sell hot bulbosore cards and that tells you that they've fallen in power. Oh god, Yeah, Pokemon have grown in value. Waited Oh wow, balance the scale. Yeah, and in Japan, it's not just the Yakuza stealing Pokemon cards. That's where they're from. By the way, the Pokemon.

Pokemons from Japan. Yeah, and the Yukuza they're from Japan.

Yeah, hand and hand cultural production. No. A couple of years ago, there was a Pokemon crime spree sweeping Japan. In August of twenty twenty two, thieves lifted around five hundred and forty cards worth about two hundred thousand dollars from a shop in Tokyo.

Five hundred and forty. They're going to flood the market.

Yeah for the best. Was this this Japanese guy who got busted for repelling down a bill right in order to steal Pokemon cards?

Oh my, is he a gig worker?

No safety harness, just vibe. No, he was an it worker in Tokyo and in March of twenty twenty one, he used a rope to sended a six story building to steal about eighty trading cards worth more than nine thousand dollars. And then he also found two thousand dollars in cash. And apparently he was desperate to get out of debt that he'd created for himself. It sounds like a scary way to try and get some quick cat.

Oh, he's like a movie henchman like kind of crazy stuff.

This is what he told the cops quote. I was in my high school's rock climbing club, so I wasn't afraid of heights. Okay, yeah, So the police identified him using surveillance footage. He gets arrested. They didn't say which Pokemon were taken or their condition upon recovery. But you know what, thoughts and prayers, prayer, Let's take a break. When we come back, we're going to look into more card theft and other Pokemon misadventures.

Yeah, Elizabeth Zareny, Yeah you did Pokemon.

Okay, Pokemon.

Pokemon theft isn't just a japan thing.

I bet not. I bet it goes down here too.

If there's one thing the good old us of A knows how to export its ridiculous card.

I knew it.

And what's more American and criminal than Walmart, USA, USA. July twenty fourth, twenty twenty two, Ohio's Bowling Green police were called to Walmart on West Gypsy Lane Road. There were two people inside the store stocking up on Pokemon cards, and Walmart employees they watched the pair and they who happened to be wearing black masks, and yet the employees recognized them as a man and a woman who's stolen

These aren't special, these are just in the normal with the gum.

Yeah. He gets out of his car. The cop does. He looks around the corner of the building, sees the suspects red Chevy with a broken side window covered in plastic the old probable cosmobiles.

They have cardboard.

It was a ready season. A second officer parked across the street and a third park down the road. Boys, we got ourselves a take down.

I'm telling you. Perimeter security.

So dispatch told the cops that the store's loss prevention had lost sight of the duo, and that's when the cop parked near the building saw the busted up Chevy driving toward the exit and passed the officer who was parked across the street. Also, so the two people seen in the vehicle matched the description given by the employee the cops. They tried to pull the Chevy over a couple of blocks away, but them duke boys weren't all about that, so they took off. The Chevy takes off.

They were born.

It happened to make their way anyway. They know how I can just start singing the whole thing. So anyway, the Chevy Chevy gets onto the freeway starts going speeds over one hundred and five miles an hour.

For pokemon cars.

Yeah, they must have had a couple of them rated tens in there, right. So the chase goes on a couple of cars driving up on the shoulders both right and left to get around heavy traffic. Then they get off the freeway, they spin out and then continue down another road. Sure they would like slow for a stop sign, but not fully right, No, just a Chevy's say it's the shovvyest like entification. They didn't fully stop. Add that

Are you kidding?

The cops were wiped out, Like, oh, how that took it out of me. They go back to the station to regroup and like think this out, kind of just catch a breath, and and they're given photos of the store surveillance and they look and they're like, that's Nicholas Starkey and Kayla Cannaba. They're frequent flyers. They know they're like, I know them. So those who must have grabbed some serious loot from the Walmart, like forget great value and

Oh?

Lord, dollars. According to the police report, two hundred and eighty four dollars in merchandise was taken from the No, that's the saddest trombone right there, and then they got busted.

Saddest misdemeanor.

Twenty twenty two. That was a rough year for Pokemon cards. I keep bringing it up. Why let's do a little side quest. Oh, I've been talking about the value of the cards and how they for the most part.

Keep going talk about the aesthetic.

Yeah, well not yet and some of them, some of the cards are super rare, which makes them even more valuable. Obviously. What does the Pokemon company think about all this?

Elizabeth? I was curious with all of this. You know, Oh, we make cards, some of them, we make a lot of some we make a few of What do they think about that? The value creation.

They are aware, they are not happy. Oddly enough, remember they want this to be for kids, and they're actively trying to curb the speculation.

That's cool.

Yeah, See, it's been tough to get Pokemon cards for the past few years. I bet because right around their twenty fifth anniversary the cards got really popular again. And so, like you take this combination of pandemic boredom, oh right, nostalgia, and then the notion that like, I've got all these cards in my mom's garage that might make me rich, I'm sitting on wealth. Old and new Pokemon cards start selling out as soon as they hit store shelves. Wow, Like,

I bet they threw the food away with that, thinking.

To say, probably a hate waste of food, theft and crazy customer behavior. When the new cards dropped got so bad that Target took the cards off their shelves and only sold them online.

Are you kidding me?

I'm not kidding you right now.

You people can't have these. Get away from us. Don't even come into our store. We don't have them.

Yeah, you're a grown ass people acting crazy. Card grading services like the one here. I was thinking they had so many requests for grading from collectors that they had to pause new submissions in order to get through their backlog.

Are you kidding?

No, So the Pokemon company sees this, Yeah, this is how they responded. Quote, We're aware that some fans are experiencing difficulties purchasing certain Pokemon Trading card game products due to the very high demand. They said this in a tweet. In response, we are reprinting impacted products at maximum capacity. More fans can enjoy the Pokemon TCG.

I was just about to say, they control the production. How do they flood the zone?

What's maximum capacity? We're wondering, we're sitting out here. In twenty twenty two, the company produced more than nine billion with a B cards, whole ninety billion as many as the year before, when they made three point seven billion cards. They usually print between one and two billion cards a year, and that means that more than forty five billion cards have been produced since the game launched, nine billion in twenty twenty two.

It's a lot of ink.

More than a quarter of all Pokemon cards printed were produced from twenty twenty to twenty twenty two. Yeah, more than a quarter. So that's why we see this twenty twenty two uptick one place that ticked on up.

I'm sure the fans would just come up with a whole This is a pre twenty twenty.

Two That's exactly what happened. Yeah, and so punch Out Gaming, Forest Lake, Minnesota, little shop. In February of twenty twenty two, a thief broke into a vacant store next door to punch Out Gaming and punched out. Broke through the sheared wall like some sort of crazy coolid. They punched in. Over the course of about two hours, the dude emptied out two entire storage rooms full of Pokemon products. Wow, and the store's alarm never went off because it was

Damn?

The owner of the store said quote, he must have had help because there were a lot of boxes, and according to Fox nine, who interviewed him, quote, the gaming store has been opened for eight years and the theft has been a big hit to the small, family owned business. Quote. I realized how much money, product and time we put into it, and I just started crying. I can't recover this product because our distributors don't have any so even with the insurance money, that doesn't do us any good,

Are you kidding?

I'm serious of it? Turns out. I guess they from the shop and they figured, okay, we had the people are like, we've identified a Matthew Cooper's and then this guy, Dustin Witturn. They worked together to break into the store. They used a knife to cut through the drywall. They creeped in through the hole, stole the cards and the merchandise. Somewhere along the line they left DNA. I'm impressed that police there used that technology for a burglary. That's above and beyond, and I love it.

I know you're always about touch DNA.

I am. They got charged with third degree burglary and then the store they you know, upgraded their security alarms that monitored more than the door. They also leased the space next door where they broke in, and they made it into a new gaming area. Well look at that happy ending all the way around. One another happy ending.

I love Pokemon happy endings.

This one has spoiler alert happy ending. So it was a quiet day recently at pro Play Games in Miami. It's a little shop that's located in one of those two story strip malls on a busy multi lane avenue.

I can picture it.

Well, yeah, the strip mall is in it's in a huge complex that makes sort of an L shape coming off a big public.

Smart imagine coral colored paint.

I like publics. I wish we had them out here.

Yeah, they're good.

The recently defunct Florida Career College looks to have taken up most of the top floor of one half of the complex. There's a dentist's office, a nail salon, a smoke shop, a Chinese restaurant, a place does concealed gun permits.

This is so Florida.

Oh, it is freestyle fighting academy.

Like I'm visiting family. This is amazing freestyle fighting academy.

Oh I heard you and pro play games.

Yeah all together.

Sure, a lot more, but you get the picture. Speaking of picture, yes, zarens Oh, yeah, I want you to picture it. It's a warm May day in Miami. You're an eight year old girl. Your mom was in the phlebotomy program at Florida Career College, but the whole place closed down a few months ago after the FEDS busted them for cooking the enrollment in federal financial aid books. You're standing outside the college on the outdoor second floor walkway of the shopping center where the college is located.

Yeah, I love that. I love community actions.

So this guy, Jesse L. Manfer All Man for All, Yeah, he tried to walk out of that shop with three thousand Pokemon cards.

Sarah, what's your new fake name of choice? You mean me, mister man for All.

That was thirty thousand dollars worth of cards that he had in that ninth Yeah. And so he gets booked into jail on charges of grand theft and aggravated assault, and the day was saved. It's like something out of a comic book or a cool game. Yes, there's footage. I'm going to have the interns put that on Instagram too. Let's pause here for some ads, and when we come back more Pokemon zaren. So we've established the Pokemon cards easy to steal. It's a lucrative lift. You know what,

Okay, so he's a lot yeah, like Jimi Hendrix.

There's one groups. So they just keep like shaking him. They feel he's got a pulse, so they just keep shaking him, and finally he wakes up and he's all disoriented. This is all in the police report. With some quick on the spot investigation, the cops determined that the student was under twenty one years of age. They continued their investigation. He's like they asked how many drinks he's had, four beers.

Obviously, Okay, I'll put it this way. A lot of people are unaware of the fact that those bouncers often only care if you go through the act of showing them a card. I didn't realize that when I was young until I tried it because one day I wanted to get in. I wasn't twenty one. I was with a bunch of people who were older and they were so I said, hey, let me see your ID. He's like, oh, I don't have I only have my idea. I'm like, you were just saying you have an expired ID. He's like,

Can't find this guy's name and what he really what if he actually looked exactly like Sharazar. That would be dope, and they're like, well that makes sense. Yeah, Pokemon Sorry, we've always been careful. Pokemon Go is happening. You're very valuable around as a total side of Pokemon Go. But yeah, there were so many crimes associated with Pokemon Go of like trespassing, and then they're all like.

People getting robbed.

Oh yeah, and then there's like super violent crimes that we won't but yeah, that that could be its whole.

And then the one person like walked off the cliff.

It's crazy anyway, So he used that card to get into the bars. An ambulance showed up, checked the kid out. He declined transport to a hospital, which is smart because ambulance rides are expensive, and then he was given medical amnesty from any charges because they were just more concerned about his well being. So could you imagine trying to live that down? Like your two things, you're either like I would tell everybody legend or you're like the biggest nerds.

How am I not a legend? I gave the comps a Shahrazard card and they're like, sorry, where do you what is this? I'm like this is my ID, And they're like, are you kidding me? I went through my.

Whole night with this. Yeah, I guess he is a legend. Good good on him. Back to the robbing and stealing, the burning and looting.

You think he's a nerd?

I do one thing. It's one thing to steal Pokemon stuff from a card shop, sure, whether you bust through a wall or just walk right out. But it's another to go after the collectors. Do they make good targets individually? Oh yeah, you better believe it. Oh yeah. And yet another twenty twenty two crime. Wow, a grown man had his card stolen from right out from under him.

The rest of us had no idea so much Pokemon was going on. Two.

Christopher Polydoro a sixty two year old insurance broker in South Carolina. He lives in a seven bedroom, sixty eight hundred square foot home right on the water.

He's doing well selling insurance.

Yeah, he kept his collection of valuable Pokemon first edition cards and a temperature controlled collectible room in his house.

Room.

Yeah, not like a gun safe, now, like a room. And like if you're at his house for a party and he tries to like flex on you and brag and show you this room and then I just like impede my pants laughing and then escort it out.

You said, this is a seven bedroom home, so yeah, only six of them are bedrooms. One is a temperature controlled Pokemon bedrooms.

And then on top of that, there's an extra room. It's it's a candy spelling gift wrap room. It's its own thing. It's its own thing.

Wow.

And it wasn't just all Pokemon cards. There were baseball, football, basketball cards in there too. Had like a Jackson three unopened boxes of Pokemon cards went missing. Polydor told investigators that the only other individuals to ever enter the collectible's room in the past nine months were workers with an h VAC company. So he's not even showing this stuff off anyone.

Yeah, no friends, no family, doesn't even have like a Pokemon buddy to.

Come over and look at his lightest two adult sons, and he lives with his fiance. Okay, those are my suspects. The best part is that the police report states that the Pokemon cards were valued at half a billion dollars. A yeah, and is there like a parenthesis ha ha ha ha. That's obviously not true. And then Polydor told the press that the cop me to typeout they're actually worth half a million dollars five hundred thousand dollars worth of Pokemon cards. That's insane, that's nuts. He said they

Okay.

One of the boxes, he said, contained a valuable Japanese edition of the cards, and his valuation was based on recent auction sales that brought in six figures for similar first edition boxes issued in nineteen ninety nine. So that's what you're saying, like, if you can get the pre twenty twenty two massive run. The collection was not insured. And again, I don't think it was the HVAC guys. I think it's the two grown kids. I think they did it. That's pure speculation on my part, don't sue me.

I'm just saying. The man's a collector. He's known to break in to steal things. I think so was there a woman he get impressed with this card?

Because case clothes we solved it. Next we have thefts from stores, thefts from collectors. What about thefts from the source, from the fact.

The magazine Hip hop magazine, the source.

With the game on the cover. This is from the factory itself. So apparently steps from Pokemon printing factories became a trend during the pandemic. Prices are starting to go up. If you're a factory worker and you see this paper gold come sliding on by you on a production inside jobs gangster's breakdown, of course you're sitting right there. Got to catch them all.

The gold is going right past you.

Thank you. And so the Pokemon company that's the like the found out about this and quietly tried to put a stop to it. And then last year the biggest every factory theft came to light. Well, a photo went around of thousands of Fusion strikes secret rare cards that were stolen from a factory in twenty twenty one.

Fusion strikes, Fusion strikes, Sarin Elizabeth, This fusion strike you mentioned, you know.

What what is? It beats me. Even after reading this explanation on the Pokemon website, the road ahead reveals limitless potential with the Pokemon TCG Sword and Shield Fusion Strike expansion, offering opportunities for Pokemon and trainers alike to reach new heights. The most recent expansion introduces the third and final battlestyle, Fusion Strike, joining Rapid Strike Style and Single Strike Style. The Fusion Strike style prioritizes teamwork and adaptability to deliver

Elizabeth, I have this headgear. I'd like you to put this on. I'd like you to read all of that again with the head gear on. Could you do that for me?

Vmax from vax incredible three HP?

You like?

I don't it? May, I'm more.

Confused and sounds for you.

I know that I feel like I'm having a stroke. The stolen Fusion Strike cards, they're passed around the criminal underworld, like so many spongy gloves, being offered. Finally to a hobby store in Texas called Trading Card World, very unique name. Someone came in and was like, you want to buy a set of these Fusion strikes and then they were like, what's that, and they had to explain the whole thing you read from the Pokemon website like I just did.

No one has.

This had to have come from the source.

Like if you walked in with Wagner cards.

There's this there's this amazing Pokemon website called PokeBeach dot com.

What like beach like as in were the waves beach be.

This beach over beach poke Beach. So it's like, I don't know.

Him on I'm seeing the Jamaicans coming back around, coming back to its source.

They reported quote the seller explained his connection to his source, and we immediately contacted TPCI, which would be the Pokemon Company International through proper channels. The store stated tpc I opened an investigation and a private investigator flew out to collect the cards from the store. Pokemon expressed to this or that quote it was the largest return of stolen

That's what I would think.

The odds wouldn't be in your favor. More on this from Poke Beach, oh thank you quote. The cards seem to have been stolen during the production phase. When they're stored in boxes. The secret rares are printed separately from other cards because of their texture. The secret rares are printed on large sheets, cut into individual cards, and stored in long white boxes. See this, I can understand. I can follow this.

Gold ticket stuff for.

Kamon language. But these guys make sense, Okay, I'll continue on. At least five of those white boxes are packed into a cardboard box that sent off to machines that sort the cards into booster packs. The machine loads different boxes of cards into each booster pack depending on their rarity.

Much thought put in, like lifter cards and stuff or waider cards what you want to call them.

So it seems to me, what.

Does it seem to you?

A little? But there's nowhere safe for Pokemon cards except for in the grubby hands of a kid.

Yeah, where they immediately tarnished the value by making them not being pristine value.

I put love on them, Yes, exactly, Zaren. What is your ridiculous takeaway.

When it comes to things like, uh, collectibles, I hate boxes. So like I've I was you know, I had friends one time, Elizabeth, when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I had friends and they used to like some of them were like only children, and they were like, Oh, I'm going to collect stuff and then I'm going to sell back to you in a couple of years. And I was like, I'm not going to buy. They're like, yeah, you will, yeah, And I'm like what.

Yeah.

I'm not a collector in that way, but I do collect stuff and then I make it all grubby. So I'm not really a collector. I'm more of like a stuff haver.

But I think it's a true collector because it's for a personal thing I look at, like, here, let me give you my ridiculous takeaways. Thank you for as I didn't really care, but go on. I feel like we primed the pump for millennials to get super heavy into this because the nineties were Pokemon and beanie babies. Oh yeah, and a couple of beanie babies were like kids weren't allowed to play with beanie babies, like they had to leave the tags on because they were going to gain value.

They had a bunch of other stuff, like those pocket walk things.

Like yeah, all sorts of that stuff. So but it was like here's a toy, but it's not a toy. I don't really play with it. This is going to be worth something later on. And so then now like they're all kind of looking back at their childhood stuff.

I mean, like.

Yeah, instead of like lovingly, like you know, looking at that kind of thing. And so I just anytime I see a beanie baby with a tag on it, I want to pull the tag off. It's supposed to be. It's the summer of dark Elizabeth. I not like I don't.

I'm gonna watch my p's and q's.

I have been pushed to my absolute limit and it doesn't help. But it's like nine thousand degrees right now.

That is driving always does that about you. You get a little prickly when it gets hot with that mercury climb.

Also, it's just even so I just these days. Oh, there's a lot to get there's a lot to get heated about. The world's kind of crazy, yeah, and so I'm getting I'm trying to be as gentle as I can with everybody, even though on the inside I'm just not raging constantly about everything. So yeah, be watch your beanie babies around me. I'm wanna rip the tags off. David. You know what make me feel better? A talk back?

Can you hook this woman up?

Oh God, I love get.

Hello from Utah's Aaron Elizabeth, producer, Dave, all the interns. I wanted to say, thank you guys so much for giving us such an amazing show. I have undergone a lot of surgeries the last few years. You guys have been there with me every step of the way to help make recovery a little bit easier and full of laughs with all of your crazy antics and ridiculous crimes. And I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

We love you, we got you back. First of all, you're the kindest person because you gave a shout out to the interns. Yes and big d. And also we know what it's like to live in bodies that are not cooperative. So fully, I'm there with you. I love it. I'm glad we could help totally.

I'm so glad we give you there. Yeah, I've done on my back on the hospital bed. Oh my god.

So yeah, that's I like that. That makes me happy. Now now the summer of Dark Elizabeth is bright and half a little feel really good. This is as a reciprocation machine over here. It is. That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. It's ad Age declared it the website of the century. Did you see that?

I saw that.

I got the telegram and then Entertainment Weekly named it the number three of the top five hundred websites. Wow of the year twenty twenty six.

I'm still surprised by that I know so good.

So anyway, ridiculous Crime dot com. We're at Ridiculous Crime on Twitter and Instagram. You can email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Please download the iheartapp and leave us a talk back because I love them reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited by Pokemon Wrangler to the stars Dave Coustin starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by Bulbosor Trainer

Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts. My Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.