A Florida man has been arrested after $12,000 of Pokémon cards were stolen from a local store, during a break-in that involved a battery-powered chainsaw.
Clayton Warren, 33, has been charged with burglary and theft of good totalling more than $10,000 following a somewhat bungled heist at Collection Realm, a trading card store in West Palm Beach.
According to KSL, surveillance footage shows a man fitting Warren’s appearance at the store just two days before the break-in. A mysterious figure then gains entry to the store overnight on May 21 — initially trying to smash a window with a rock, before resorting to the small chainsaw.
Warren does not seem to have proven hard to find, as surveillance cameras also spotted the licence plate on his car. Blood was also left behind at the scene, following the chainsaw usage.
The incident is just the latest in a long, long run of break-ins and thefts targeting Pokémon’s hugely lucrative and often hard-to-find trading cards. Back in January, staff and shoppers were held at gunpoint in a brazen raid at a card shop in Manhatten as $100,000 worth of stock was swiped. Nintendo then got in touch with the store — to say its name needed to change as it sounded too much like an official Pokémon shop.
In December, $100,000 worth of stock was also swiped from a store in Burbank — although that was also overnight. At the time, Californian cops said they suspected the raid was linked to “half a dozen” similar thefts within the southern half of the state in recent weeks. Numerous other examples have also occured nationwide over the past 12 months.
Last month, another desperate Pokémon fan was arrested in Pasadena, California, after hiding inside a closed Best Buy ahead of a Pokémon card drop.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
