Photo: Getty Images/Punch-Out Gaming
A family-owned gaming store in Minnesota was hit with a burglary that cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise.
Punch-Out Gaming in Forest Lake, Minnesota shared surveillance footage of the heist, showing a man entering the store through a hole in the wall he created from an adjacent store that was vacant.
Although the footage captured a clear image of the man's face, his identity remains unknown.
The burglar took an unspecified amount of cash from the store along with a ton of Pokémon merchandise over the span of two hours. The total amount of items stolen was estimated to be worth around $250,000.
The owner of the store, brothers Mike and Eric Johnson have a hunch on who might have broken into their store. Eric said he thinks the culprit is either someone who was a former employee or someone who had previously seen the back storage area of the store based on how he seemingly knew exactly where all of the Pokémon merchandise was.
"They were pretty precise on where they went through, which leads us to believe it was somebody who used to work here or it’s someone we know who has seen those rooms," he observed. "Our store has so much security here, but we don’t have a motion sensor in our storage room because we never thought someone would go through a wall."
Eric says even though the store has insurance, it doesn't matter that much because the Pokémon merchandise that was stolen can't be replaced right now due to shortages.
The prices of Pokémon cards have skyrocketed in recent years as packs of unopened cards have become increasingly rare. Eric says the Pokémon community has come out in support of Punch-Out Gaming, saying they are on the lookout for suspicious listings of cards and merchandise for sale.