Czech Republic: Store employee used LEGO boxes

If you are a fan of buying minifigs on their own, you must have dealt in the past with one or more sellers located in the Czech Republic who are selling their stock on Bricklink or eBay.

It is often assumed that many minifigs discreetly come out of the LEGO factories located in Mexico (Monterey) or in the Czech Republic (Kladno), which also often allows us to obtain some unpublished visuals long months before the marketing of the sets that will contain the characters concerned.

But the mishap that just happened to the owner of a toy store in Kladno reveals that it's not just LEGO factories that are releasing minifigs in quantity: An employee of this toy store managed to extract more than 6000 minifigs of boxes marketed by the store to then resell them on the internet, even working on order for its customers.

It was following complaints from many store customers who could not find their minifigs in the freshly purchased boxes that the owner reached out directly to LEGO to report the problem. LEGO obviously replied to the store owner that such a rate of "disappearance" could not be linked to a production defect and that it was necessary to take a close look at the behavior of the employees of the sign.

One thing led to another, the 23-year-old employee found himself in the hands of the local police and he will have to be held to account. He faces 5 years in prison.

I would like to take this opportunity to advise you, when shopping in store, to always check that the box is well sealed (either by making sure that the round transparent stickers are present, or by checking that the pre-cut opening points are intact) ...

(via Metro UK)