The theory was that when people shook the box, they heard “LEGO” rather than “penne”. The scam worked briefly, but the LEGO bandit is now in custody.
“One of the cases that occurred here in Orange County, they shared that they opened the box and instead of Legos, they found bags of dry pasta,” Officer Ziggy Azarcon said.
Investigators said the dry pasta mimics the sound of Legos when they’re shaken. Officers said Augustine got refunds at Target locations in Costa Mesa, Irvine and Westminster, as well as different stores out of state.
Earlier this week, Irvine PD tracked Augustine to his Los Angeles County apartment and arrested him. They found several packages of Lego pieces.
Turns out the system is less “trust but verify” and more “shake the box and hope for the best.”
Sadly its a super common scam in the Lego world. Lego, especially licensed sets (Star Wars, Marvel, etc), always increase in value (and exponentially when they go out of production), especially minifigures that only come in already-expensive sets.
So this guy resealed the packages; Don't you need special equipment to do that?