“DON’T Do It”
This past Wednesday (12/17) 33-year-old Kyle K. Yamaguchi of Portland, Oregon pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Portland to conspiracy to transport, receive and sell stolen goods for shipping 42 stolen Nike sneakers to a buyer in Florida in April 2013 for $62,000, according to OregonLive.
Yamaguchi worked as a Nike promotional product manager between July 2006 and January 2012. It was during that time that he ordered sample sneakers to the company’s headquarters and arranged to sell them to 35-year-old Jason Keating of Fort Meyers, Florida. Upon Keating parting ways with the company in January 2012, he then enlisted his successor, Tung Ho, as the plug and acted as the middle man between the two.
According to the formal indictment, Keating paid $679,650 for more than 630 pairs of shoes that Yamaguchi and Ho stole from Nike between September 2012 to March 2014.
Yamaguchi received a percentage of the shoe sale profits from Keating, who offered them to other collectors and small retailers across the country, prosecutors said.Police seized nearly 1,950 pairs of Nike sneakers from Ho’s home during a raid last March, according to a criminal complaint. He admitted to investigators that he had stolen hundreds of pairs of Nike Look See shoes and either sold them on eBay or through Yamaguchi, the complaint said.Ho claimed he made $15,000 selling the sneakers on eBay, the complaint said.According to a federal search warrant, Ho ordered 46 pairs of LeBron James branded sneakers in May 2012 that the company couldn’t account for. In February of this year, investigators found one of the pairs of sneakers suspected of being stolen by Ho, a limited “MVP” edition of LeBron IX shoes, advertised on eBay for $20,000.
[VIA]
–Jamaal Fisher (@jamaalfisher)
