William Swanberg

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William Swanberg is a resident of Reno, Nevada, who has been charged with shoplifting and reselling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Lego toys. He is widely known as the "Lego Bandit." He was arrested in November of 2005 as he left a Target retail store in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Swanberg's alleged theft appears to have focused exclusively on Target stores, in the states of Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah. Police and federal investigators were contacted when Target Assets Protection identified similar thefts in a number of stores. Store personnel were also trained to watch out for UPC tampering on Lego products.

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[edit] Arrest

Swanberg had exchanged UPC stickers on several Lego toy sets to reduce their prices and then purchased them at the Portland area store. Target Assets Protection employees confronted him as he left the store and summoned police, who found thousands of dollars worth of similarly-altered Lego toys in his car. They also found a laptop computer used to plot directions to several other Target stores.

The resulting investigation of Swanberg's home turned up another $200,000 in Lego merchandise, which police hauled away in a twenty-foot cargo van. Records also found in his home indicate that his sales of Lego toys exceeded half a million dollars over a period of three years.

[edit] Involvement with BrickLink

The username of swanberg was a well-known figure on BrickLink, a web site used to trade Lego products. Some of Swanberg's buyers expressed concern over the possible seizure of their collections as evidence, though this does not appear to have taken place. Postings on BrickLink's forums also hinted at the possibility of a lawsuit against Swanberg based on his unfair sales strategies, but this also appears unlikely.

Unclear language in an Associated Press story led several journalists to erroneously identify Swanberg as the owner of BrickLink. This caused a moderate upset among the site's users, but did not adversely affect BrickLink. The site may yet be benefiting from this media exposure. A correction was later released by AP.

Mr Swanberg also performed the function of Inventory Admin on Bricklink for almost 2 years, a task that involved verifying the inventories of LEGO sets.

[edit] Today

Swanberg currently resides at the Washington County, Oregon Jail, where he is being held on $250,000 bail.

He pleaded guilty to theft on 21 April 2006.

As part of plea bargain deal, sentenced to 13 months in prison on 3 July 2006.

He was arrested on 26 October 2006 on a warrant issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Reno, Nevada [1].

[edit] External links

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