Podcast Host (3:18)

So are they selling on a black market or is that, or is it a particular kind of LEGO people are stealing? Is it just Star wars something else?

Chris Vitelago (3:25)

Well, you've got two types of people who steal lego. There's the opportunistic smash and grab thieves who basically go into a Kmart and grab a 50 or $100 set of Lego off the shelf and they run off with it. For them, who are usually trying to get a quick fix for drugs, LEGO is actually, it holds its value remarkably well on the black market. So $100 set of Lego will sell for $50, which is a great return for somebody with a drug problem who might be boosting something else, like a mobile phone or whatever. It doesn't hold its value.

Podcast Host (3:55)

Okay, wait, no, I've got to stop you there. So a car depreciates the second you drive it off the lot, like every note. Heck is lego? Why do you get such a different turn for lego?

Chris Vitelago (4:05)

Well, this is the thing I discovered because I was also hunting for it for our own reasons. Is it. Almost nobody throws LEGO out, right? Like, you keep it, you keep. And I've spoken to people since who's who've messaged me after I wrote the story saying I got every LEGO piece of LEGO I had since I was six.

Podcast Host (4:20)

And how old are these people now?

Chris Vitelago (4:22)

In their 40s. And I started, I started going to like op shops and I'd ask the guy, have you got any Lego? And he goes, not me. We can't keep it here. As soon as somebody donates it, it disappears. Somebody will come and Buy it, throw out lego. They keep it or they sell it, or they shift it on. And there's always demand for it for some reason. It's. I. I called it in the story Plastic Gold.

Podcast Host (4:41)

Okay, so to tell us why this is now, I told you before recording, I'm a massive LEGO nerd. I have collected my own minifigurines that, you know, somehow seem to me to be Canadian, a lumberjack. I've stretched it to a Yeti with an icy pole. Total stretch doesn't count, but whatever, in my own mind, it does. Why do people love lego?

Chris Vitelago (4:59)

I mean, kids of all ages love it, right? And adults love it because what you can do with it. But I don't know, there's just something about it. And as I discovered, it's not just lego, but it's certain parts of lego. So what I learned was that a lot of the time, the set itself is not important. What's important is the minifigs inside of it. So the minifigs, the secondary market for minifigs is crazy. Like, I went to a shop and they were selling some of these minifigs, really exclusive ones for like 400 bucks.

Podcast Host (5:27)

And for the uninitiated, that's short form for minifigurine. And so these are just the figurine with the movable arms and legs, the replaceable heads. They often have, you know, cool outfits. If it's a Star wars thing, they might actually have a fabric cape. Like, if it's Yoda.

Chris Vitelago (5:40)

Yeah. And there's Harry Potter ones and there's. Yeah, there's Disney ones.

Podcast Host (5:44)

Okay, so we love the minifigs. We get this now. You've told us they keep their value to a remarkable degree. But why are they such a target for criminals? Because, you know, keeping their value is one thing, but this has become a massive problem. Problem. You know, you spoke to one shop owner, Chris Herwood, he said it's an easy sell. It's so popular. There's so much of a market for it. There's all this talk about how it's a better asset than gold and stocks and things, and that's where your criminal gangs are getting into it. So tell us about why criminals have cottoned on to lego. Beyond the fact that they just, you know, keep their value relative to other

Chris Vitelago (6:17)

items with so many other products at this price point or the higher price point and beyond. They have serial numbers on them, right? You can track a watch, you can track, like, a stereo system. LEGO has no low serial numbers. They're effectively. They're Untraceable even in its original packaging, never opened. The box itself can't be traced. At best the police can trace back to a batch that was on a pallet that left the factory at this particular time. So if you steal 10 sets of a particular type of LEGO, Star Wars, LEGO, they can't ever prove that you stole that unless they catch you red handed. But also there's a whole subset of LEGO that appreciates in value and sometimes dramatically appreciates in value. And that can be the big sets and it can be the small sets and it chastes change as well. Like apparently Star wars was big for a while, it's not anymore. Now it's Ninjago, sometimes it's Disney, sometimes it's like the specialty ones that look like flowers. It moves all over the place. But at the end of the day, like there's just constant demand for it.

Samantha Sellinger Morris (7:20)

After the break.

Chris Vitelago (7:21)

There was a case last year, a year before last, where men went into a shop during the middle of the day and held the shop up with effectively with a drill bit. And they threatened the owner and they took the Lego and they run.

Cash Avalanche Casino Slot Advertiser (7:40)

Remember 1981 car payments were 200, maybe $300 a month. Yeah, we missed that during our 45th anniversary. We're not bringing back the 17% interest rates or the hairstyles, but we are bringing back something better. Payments that actually make sense. Drive home a new Mazda with modern tech, safety and reliability with real offers that work today. Enter to win $4,500 for you and $4,500 for a local nonprofit. Stop by any McCurley location to enter. No purchase necessary. McCurley Mazda your way home.

Podcast Host (8:10)

Okay, so this explains, you know, why as you've written in your piece, you know, some Lego in certain shops is wrapped in anti theft cables that are attached to alarms. Other toy shops you've put have reinforced their doors and windows and installed special metal shutters to further protect their properties against RAM raids. This is crazy because we're talking about Lego. But Lego's also been turning up in large volumes during police raids on organized crime gangs over clandestine drug labs or millions of dollars worth of meth. So tell us, explain to us one of these situations or scenes when cops are trying to bust a meth gang and they're what? They're, they're coming on lego.

Chris Vitelago (8:51)

Oh yeah, there was, there was a case in Melbourne a couple of years ago where they basically they found a storage locker, they opened the storage locker. Inside was an entire bespoke methamphetamine Lab packed up, ready to be shipped. And next to it was tens of thousands of dollars worth of Lego. And the reason these guys end up with LEGO as basically collateral evidence at crime scenes? Well, there's two things that work. One, they can shift it pretty easy for cash. They can trade it for cash or trade it for product. It's that untraceable element to it and sometimes like it shows up in volumes. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Lego, some of it collectible and some of it not. So, but it's strange when you start to see something like this turning up as collateral evidence. Like I've seen casino chips, gold bars, but something like this Lego, I never would have picked it when I started this.

Podcast Host (9:36)

And it can be violent, right? Like, like there's one line in your story that was pretty scary. You wrote that. Last year in Victoria, LEGO reseller Brick Evolution was targeted by a professional burglary crew. Six men in ma gloves and headlamps broke into the Cheltenham store and cleaned out more than 130 sets in less than 10 minutes. Like, are people ever getting harmed during these thefts?

Chris Vitelago (9:59)

Fortunately, in that case, that store was robbed in the middle of the night or in the very early morning. There was a case last year, a year before last, where men went into a shop during the middle of the day and held the shop up with, effectively with a drill bit and they, they threatened the owner and they, they took the Lego and they run. Violence is pretty unusual with this, although there are a lot of stores, particularly the big box stores, which are not going to appreciate me saying this, but the, basically the standing order is you don't chase them. If they grab and run, you let them go. That's what I've been told. Because they don't want violence and confrontation.

Podcast Host (10:31)

And so criminals are now using Lego. Do I have this right to launder dirty money and hide their assets? If I've got that right. How, how are they doing that?

Chris Vitelago (10:41)

It's stunning, right, because you can take $25,000 worth of dirty cash and buy Lego sets and then sell them quite openly on ebay or on Facebook Marketplace. You can transport them, you can store them. It's not illegal.

Podcast Host (10:53)

So is that how criminals are generally offloading the stolen Lego? They're just selling it on ebay?

Chris Vitelago (10:57)

It happens. I spent a lot of time on ebay and Facebook Marketplace looking at prices and sets. And so basically I went through all the big box retailers and I said, well, what are these? I picked five or six different types of Lego? And I said, what are the prices right now in a shop in the northern suburbs of Melbourne versus for that exact set what was on Facebook or Marketplace? And generally speaking, you'd see the exact same set, often marketed as brand new or unopened. Same set, exactly the same, same year, same model, just 25%, 30% lower. And some of the, some of these sellers, like, why would you have 14 sets of the exact same type of Lego? Like, it just defies belief. Why you have 14 unopened boxes of the same piece of Star Wars Lego Just.

Podcast Host (11:42)

Or just Yetis. Like just Yetis and their environment? I mean, that's the one I want. But where else in the world is this happening? Because you wrote about a surprising number that were happening in Australia. You know, some of them, like you said, in the hundreds of thousands. Last month you wrote a police raid in Adelaide uncovered $320,000 worth of Lego hidden in the garage of a suburban home that was part of a sophisticated retail theft operation that had targeted to stores and retailers around the city. But what about elsewhere in the world? Like, is this just us LEGO freaks in Australia? Or should I say LEGO thieves in Australia? Or where is it happening elsewhere?

Chris Vitelago (12:18)

It's happening everywhere. Funnily enough, after I filed this story, a day before it was published, there was another seizure in America, which I think was worth a million dollars. It's happening all over the place.

Podcast Host (12:28)

Wait, 1.4 estimated million dollars. I mean, that is bananas.

Chris Vitelago (12:33)

It's a lot of Lego. And if you can go online and see the footage from South Australia from a couple of weeks ago or from month, one of the TV crews got a, a drone as the police were unloading it. And they go up, you know, they go up in the back and you look at, it's. It was three trailer loads that the police had to haul away from that one house. 15 shipping pallets.

Podcast Host (12:53)

Okay, so I've, I've got to ask, I mean, is Lego the company, A, do they know about this? And B, are they freaking out?

Chris Vitelago (12:59)

They don't like to talk about it. Nobody wants to talk about it. Wes Farmers, which owns Kmart and Target, would, wouldn't talk to me about it. Woolworths, who owns Big W, wouldn't talk about it. Lego certainly wouldn't talk about it yet.

Podcast Host (13:10)

They just don't want associated with robbers. Is that it? And crime.

Chris Vitelago (13:14)

They just, yeah, they just don't want the, the brand reflection, I suppose. But they wouldn't even answer basic questions about how big is this issue? What are the steps that are being taken like, no, nobody wants to talk about it.

Podcast Host (13:24)

So in the 90s and 2000s, you had Burberry grappling with the fact that they were associated with soccer hooligans. And now Lego.

Chris Vitelago (13:30)

Yeah, There you go.

Podcast Host (13:31)

A2 Lego. Okay, so I've got to ask, this is a random question, but in terms of global crime trends, like which countries does Australia generally follow? If we do, like if the States had this happening with the Lego first, just likely that we would follow.

Chris Vitelago (13:45)

Well, look, 20 years ago, before the widespread Internet and social media and all the rest of it, countries did tend to to learn from each other. It's less so now because you can see things instantaneously. Right. Like I was talking before about, there's a famous case in, in Australia about smuggling ecstasy inside tomato tins. It was known as the tomato tins case was the world's largest ecstasy bust at the time. I didn't know until I went on a holiday to Las Vegas a couple years later. That idea was actually stolen from an idea the New York mafia had done in the 70s, which was putting heroin into monotons. You know, everything old is new again. And in some ways, we're market leaders in retail theft. Like, if you look at the statistics for general retail theft in Australia, it's off the charts in the last two years, which is interesting because for a while it was going down. Now it's just through the roof.

Podcast Host (14:31)

Well, that dovetails with the cost of living crisis.

Chris Vitelago (14:33)

Yes.

Podcast Host (14:34)

Right, right. Okay. And so just to wrap up, Chris, I've got to ask you, like, are you now looking at your kids Lego stash with a slightly different eye? Are you just looking at those you builder figures, you know, with their adorable little like, briefcases and like, I'm definitely

Chris Vitelago (14:49)

making sure they don't get sucked up in a vacuum cleaner or eaten by the dog?

Podcast Host (14:54)

Well, I tell you what, it was such an interesting read, so thank you, Chris, as always for your time.

Chris Vitelago (14:59)

Thank you.

Samantha Sellinger Morris (15:06)

Today's episode was produced by Josh Towers.

Podcast Host (15:10)

Our executive producer is Tammy Mills.

Samantha Sellinger Morris (15:12)

And our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. If you like our show, follow the morning edition and leave a review for us on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for listening.