By Rukmin Callimachi
Portland, Oregon - A 40-year-old man is behind bars, accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of Lego sets.
William Swanberg was indicted on Wednesday by a Washington County grand jury on two counts of felony theft and one count of attempted felony theft.
Swanberg - who is being held on $250 000 (about R1,6-million) bail - allegedly stole Lego sets from Target stores in Oregon by switching the bar codes on the boxes, covering over the pricing labels of expensive sets with labels from inexpensive ones, said Detective Troy Dolyniuk, a member of the Washington County fraud and identity theft enforcement team.
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Target, a discount retailer, estimates that Swanberg stole, and then resold on the Internet, up to $200 000 worth of the multi-coloured brick sets which authorities claim he pilfered from Target stores in Oregon, as well as Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California.
US Postal Service agents who searched Swanberg's Reno, Nevada, home had to use a 6m truck to haul away all the sets they found at the residence.
Target officials contacted police after noticing the same pattern at their stores in the five states.
Swanberg was arrested on November 17 at a Portland, Oregon-area Target store after he bought 10 boxes of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon set, priced at $99 each. In his car, authorities also found 56 of the Star Wars set, as well as 27 other Lego sets. On his laptop were the addresses of numerous Target stores in the Portland area, police said.
It was not immediately clear if Swanberg had retained counsel.
Lego's Danish founder Ole Kirk Christiansen named the famous bricks in 1934 by fusing two Danish words, "leg" and "godt" meaning "play well."
Today, according to the company's website, children across the world spend five billion hours every year playing with Lego bricks, available in 90 different colors.
The bricks have long transcended their initial purpose as just a toy and - like Crayola Crayons or Barbie - has now become a cultural symbol. There are websites for Lego collectors and on eBay, rare Lego sets can sometimes fetch thousands of dollars. - Sapa-AP
On the Net: Lego website
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