It may seem like a kids' game, but Pokémon cards are big business -- big enough that a thief allegedly made off with a binder worth tens of thousands of dollars of them last week.
Unfortunately, the purported robber didn't get very far before he ran into a group that included two mixed martial arts coaches.
According to WTVJ-TV in Miami, the attempted robbery happened on May 6 at Pro Play Games, located in the southwest part of the city.
"Police say the suspect, identified as 33-year old Jasiel Manfarrol, walked into the store and asked to see a binder filled with Pokémon cards," WTVJ reported.
"The store’s owner said that once the binder of cards was placed on the counter the suspect grabbed it and left the store."
Yes, there are enough rare Pikachu and Charizard cards that the binder was worth more than $30,000.
While there were about 3,000 Pokémon cards in there, that still works out to about $10 a card -- and it's easy enough to get away with it.
"Watching him walk away when I told him 'drop the stuff,' he like looked back and was laughing," general manager AnaMilena Machado told the station.
"It was just like at that moment it felt like so helpless, because it was like, we are just watching $30, $40 thousand dollars of our hard work just walk off."
He wasn't laughing, however, once he got outside.
Both the store's owner and several bystanders had watched what had gone on inside the store. They accosted Manfarrol, police say.
He then took out a pair of pliers and made "several stabbing motions" toward the men, police said in the arrest report.
He also told the crowd "I'm going to stab you" in Spanish.
Manfarrol, who is homeless, managed to get away from that crowd. He didn't get very far with the stash of cards, though.
Shortly after he made his getaway, two MMA coaches who were training nearby managed to corral the suspected thief.
"My friend jumped out of the car, cut him off and that’s when we got on top of him and used our jiu jitsu to subdue him," Dominic Galiana told the station.
🇺🇸 A shop owner and two martial arts coaches caught a thief who was fleeing with more than $30,000 worth of Pokémon cards from a game store in southwest Miami, Florida.pic.twitter.com/doFVHm78Dm
— Total Randomness (@Totalrandome) May 15, 2024
Police arrived moments after he was tackled and arrested the 33-year-old suspect.
He now faces charges of grand theft and aggravated assault.
https://youtu.be/Ckxtay6rUvQ?si=fOuThs2egGEx4Pf6
He's pleaded not guilty to the theft, allegedly telling police he was paid to take the cards.
As Machado said, these are cards that "a lot of people want to have," either because they're rare or effective in the card-playing game based on the Nintendo video game franchise. Manfarrol wanted them badly enough that he was allegedly willing to risk limb, if not perhaps life, to get away with them.
Thanks to two hero MMA coaches, however, the Pokémon slogan "gotta catch 'em all" referred to what police ended up doing to a suspected thief, not what Manfarrol supposedly wanted to do with the cards. Nice work, men.
