Irvine police have arrested a man on suspicion of stealing Lego pieces by removing them from their boxes and replacing them with dried pasta. The man would then allegedly return the boxes to Target for a refund. <\/p>\n
The scheme \u2014 carried out in states across the country \u2014 added up to $34,000 in stolen or damaged property from 70 known or suspected incidents, according to investigators. <\/p>\n
Jarrelle Augustine, 28, faces a charge of grand theft and was booked Tuesday at the Orange County Jail. He was arrested at an apartment in Paramount but is from Texas, said Ziggy Azarcon, public information officer for the Irvine Police Department.<\/p>\n
According to Irvine police, the department became involved in December after Augustine bought and then returned two Lego sets \u2014 with a combined value of $350 \u2014 from a Target store in Irvine. He was connected to other suspicious merchandise returns through credit card records. All told, he may be responsible for about $4,000 in stolen or damaged merchandise from Targets in Orange County since November, Azarcon said.<\/p>\n
Police said Augustine identified Lego sets with high-value collectible pieces, bought them and brought them to his residence. Sometimes, he simply removed the valuable pieces, police said. Other times, police said, he swapped out the entire set with dried pasta.<\/p>\n
If you shake the Lego boxes with the swapped contents, \u201cthey basically make the same sound,\u201d Azarcon said. \u201cCreative \u2014 that\u2019s for sure. This is something that we haven\u2019t seen done before, so it was definitely unique for our investigators to be able to put this together piece by piece.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the suspect\u2019s residence, investigators found enough contraband Lego pieces to fill two garbage bags. Although the alleged heist method was unique, the targeting of Lego is not.<\/p>\n
Lego thefts have been recorded across the country, many with high-value hauls.<\/p>\n
In Charlotte, N.C., a former Wells Fargo banker was accused of \u201cfencing\u201d hundreds of thousands of dollars of \u201chighly lucrative\u201d Lego products stolen from area Walmart and Target stores. <\/p>\n
In that case, a jury found Ryan Thomas Cahill guilty in November 2025 of felony receiving or possessing retail property obtained by organized retail theft exceeding $100,000, according to published reports<\/a>. <\/p>\n In 2024, Los Angeles police announced they\u2019d uncovered a Lego theft ring<\/a>. Officers arrested two people and seized more than 2,800 boxes of Lego toys stockpiled in a Long Beach home. Individual boxes varied in value from $20 to more than $1,000.<\/p>\n While the officers were conducting their investigation at the suspect\u2019s home, \u201cpotential buyers of the toys arrived, lured by advertisements placed … on internet sales sites,\u201d police said. <\/p>\n Around that same time, investigators were trying to unravel a possibly unrelated local smash-and-grab theft ring<\/a> targeting Lego toys. Suspects cased stores, then, after closing time, smashed windows and headed straight to the highest-value Lego sets.<\/p>\n