Your Lego or Your Life

We’ve heard of all sorts of common items being used as prison currency, especially cigarettes. At least until the elfin safety goblins banned smoking in jails. Meanwhile, techbros have urged us to buy everything from bitcoin to silver. But the true word on the street is out: forget your durries and your ingots, here’s the real ‘street gold’ the crims are using as black market currency.

Lego.

Yes, Lego.

It might not surprise anyone who’s looked at the prices of high-end Lego kits lately might not be too surprised. After all, Spider-Man: Homecoming drew an unintentional belly-laugh from cinema-goers, when ‘poor boy’ Peter Parker had a $1600 Lego Death Star. But even a basic $20 kit has to be kept under lock and key, and only handed over when the transaction is finalised, in Melbourne Kmart stores.

Some sets are considered too valuable to be put out on the floor at all, instead replaced by plastic cards that have to be taken to a customer service counter and paid for in advance.

Others are wrapped in anti-theft cables that are attached to alarms. But despite these protective measures, thieves doing a quick grab and dash with a box of Lego in hand is a regular occurrence.

“You would not believe how much of a problem we have with Lego. It just disappears if we don’t protect it,” a Kmart employee said.

Even when they do, ram-raiders smash into stores and loot the Lego. What gives?

To criminals, Lego is like gold – high-value, in demand, portable and untraceable.

Opportunistic thieves and gangland professionals alike have seized on the tiny plastic bricks as a way to cash in, launder dirty money, and hide their assets.

We’re not talking small potatoes, either.

Last month, 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 toy stores and retailers around the city. Stacked up, it came to 15 pallets worth.

Seven months earlier, $250,000 worth of Lego was seized from a different criminal syndicate in Adelaide running mass retail thefts.

Last year in Victoria, Lego reseller Brick Evolution was targeted by a professional burglary crew: Six men in masks, gloves and headlamps broke into the Cheltenham store and cleaned out more than 130 sets in less than 10 minutes.

That one raid netted 60 grand of little plastic bricks.

“Lego is an easy, easy sell and 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,” [Brick Evolution owner Chris Hurwood] said […]

Lego has also been turning up in large volumes during police raids on organised crime gangs over clandestine drug labs or millions of dollars worth of methamphetamine.

Nearly $200,000 worth of Lego was seized as evidence in a $27 million money-laundering investigation in 2021.

Pfftt. Amateurs.

In the United States, three men were arrested and charged last week after they were found driving a box truck carrying an estimated $1.4 million worth of stolen Lego.

The Lego black market is all part of a staggering surge in retail theft across Australia, with Victoria emerging as the crime capital of the nation. Much of the stuff shoplifted isn’t for the thief’s own use, but on-sold for drug money. Modern-day Fagins are sending shoplifters into stores to steal to order.

But Lego is particularly easy to launder.

Much of this stolen “plastic gold” ends up being sold through online marketplaces like Facebook and eBay, sources say.

Sellers blatantly market “unopened” or “brand new” Lego sets at discounts of 25 per cent or more off the retail price and often demand payment strictly in cash.

It’s common for “smash and grab” thieves – rather than organised theft or burglary syndicates – to demand about 50 per cent of the retail price when first selling it, which makes it a good return for street gangs and drug addicts compared to other stolen goods.

Lego sets also do not have individual serial numbers, making it impossible to tell legitimate sets apart from those stolen.

It looks like there might be an untapped goldmine sitting in storage crates in my kids’ wardrobes.