US Armed robbery part of plot to steal valuable Pokémon cards

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A man apparently robbed a woman at gunpoint so her boyfriend would go to her aid, leaving their house ripe for burglary.

Someone put a gun in the woman's face in a Tysons parking garage Wednesday morning, stole her cellphone and left, Fairfax County police said. But as the victim’s phone was stolen, she was talking to her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend heard what was going on and rushed out of their home to the parking garage to help his girlfriend.

That’s exactly what the suspect was counting on, Fairfax County police believe.

"He leaves, starts to proceed to her location, and about a short time after, he gets an activation – he has cameras inside his house – he gets an activation that someone is inside his home," said Elizabeth Melendez of Fairfax County police Violent Crimes.

The boyfriend looked at his phone, saw the security video and recognized the person inside his house as one of his friends.

That friend was stealing thousands of dollars’ worth of special Pokémon cards tucked away inside of a safe, police said.

Police quickly arrested 36-year-old Mohammad Asif of California. He appeared to be headed to the airport before he was arrested with the stolen cards, police said.

The armed robbery on Westwood Drive in Tysons happened at 9:07 a.m. Wednesday, while the burglary was 18 minutes later in Fair Oaks, leading to suspicion Asif wasn’t acting alone.

“We still have a lot of good leads to follow up on, yes," Melendez said.

Asif was charged with burglary, two counts of grand larceny, conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiracy use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

No one has been charged with the robbery of the girlfriend, yet.


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What's going on with Pokemon cards these days? This happened a few weeks ago:


Bay Area man stabbed after confrontation over Pokémon cards. Two suspects arrested
Los Angeles Times (archive.ph)
By Christopher Buchanan
2025-07-08 01:31:47GMT
A Bay Area man was stabbed over the weekend after an altercation over a place in line at a retailer that was restocking Pokémon cards, authorities say.

On Saturday morning, Colma, Calif., police responded to reports of a physical altercation between multiple individuals outside a GameStop store on Junipero Serra Boulevard, according to a news release. When officers arrived at the scene, they discovered a male victim with life-threatening head lacerations and stab wounds. He was immediately taken to a hospital, where he is in stable condition, the release said. The victim was not identified by police.

Two men, Isaiah Calles, 27, and Miguel OrellanasFlores, 49, were later arrested on suspicion of attacking the victim after OrellanasFlores allegedly cut in line for customers waiting to buy Pokémon cards, police said. Police allege that OrellanasFlores struck the victim with a mason jar and Calles used the broken glass to stab the victim multiple times.

The victim captured photos of the suspects’ license plates before they fled in separate vehicles, which led to the arrests, police said.

Footage obtained by KRON appears to show one suspect trying to keep the other suspect and the victim apart as they verbally confronted one another. One suspect pushed the victim back with his hand, which spurred a physical altercation that escalated with the two suspects piling on the victim.

Altercations over Pokémon cards — which can net resellers thousands in profit — have been an issue for retailers before. Target temporarily stopped selling the cards in stores in 2021 after four men assaulted another in Wisconsin and another fight broke out over the cards at the Atwater Village Costco early this year.

Although the Japanese trading card game is usually seen as a children’s hobby, many resellers have reaped the benefits of selling to adult collectors who will shell out hundreds of thousands for particularly rare cards. Many hobbyists on online forums say the root cause of the increase in violence at stores and on the day of restocks or releases are “scalpers” — individuals who buy up shelfloads of cards to resell them at a steep profit.

“Was only a matter of time,” a Reddit user said in reference to the Colma incident. “Fights and scuffles (that haven’t gone super viral on social media) have become increasingly common in recent months… Especially when money is involved and people become aggrieved at others ‘taking’ their income.”

OrrelanasFlores and Calles were arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, battery with serious bodily injury and conspiracy to commit a crime, the release said. Both were booked into the San Mateo County Jail
 
Daddy's Little Kitten dijo:
If you told 11 year old me in 1999 that Pokémon cards were gonna be so valuable, I would've saved them.
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I enjoy card games though only play them digitally. Most of the cards for pokemon are not worth much. Unlike degenerate magic players pokemon reprints old cards for collectors pretty regularly.

Unless you were extremely lucky odds are your collection wouldn't be worth more then a 100-200$
 
clipartfan92 dijo:
What's going on with Pokemon cards these days? This happened a few weeks ago:
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Scalping pokemon cards is big business these days. It's a speculator's market and as such, they've ruined a children's game. A mediocre NFL linebacker retired after a few seasons because he was making bank off of pokemon cards only to be exposed for scamming the shit out of people.
 
Whiskey dijo:
I enjoy card games though only play them digitally. Most of the cards for pokemon are not worth much. Unlike degenerate magic players pokemon reprints old cards for collectors pretty regularly.

Unless you were extremely lucky odds are your collection wouldn't be worth more then a 100-200$
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That's something I notice whenever I watch those videos of people opening Pokemon cards. Like the majority are not worth much. Most around $20. Maybe a hundred plus if you're really lucky.
 
break these cuffs dijo:
Scalping pokemon cards is big business these days. It's a speculator's market and as such, they've ruined a children's game. A mediocre NFL linebacker retired after a few seasons because he was making bank off of pokemon cards only to be exposed for scamming the shit out of people.
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It's OK, children don't play with physical cards anymore, they play that online pokemon tcg instead.
 
Having lived there, Tysons Corner is a center for some of the vainest, most retarded people not just in America, but internationally. A durka robbing someone over Pokemon cards is not even the stupidest shit I've heard from that dump.
 
Gotta steal em all!

Daddy's Little Kitten dijo:
If you told 11 year old me in 1999 that Pokémon cards were gonna be so valuable, I would've saved them.
Presiona para expandir...
If we'd all done that? They'd still be worth a pittance today.

Age alone doesn't increase the value of a collectible, nor rarity.... just rarity coupled with desirability.

I remember the early 90's collectable craze fueled by news stories of the fortunes made at auction by someone who found like an #1 issue of Spider Man? Or special Christmas edition Lionel train in the attic?

Everyone wanted part of that and so was coming to blows over beanie babies and fighting with little kids to buy and complete collections of Hot Wheels in the belief that they could retire on the cash from selling them 30 years down the road, sure they'd be worth millions.

But with thousands of other speculators also building huge complete collections? With the industry ramping up production to sell to them? Sometimes with from-the-factory preservation measures like sealed boxes and display stands? With no expectation whatsoever anyone would ever open it up and play with/read it? Actual value never increased. As anyone who wanted the #1 of some mid 90's superhero who flamed out after a year could get it, for a song, in mint condition. Leading to thousands of people with basements loaded with junk they couldn't sell and didn't even like.

It wiped out the baseball card industry and nearly killed comics too, as when the bottom fell out? They were all still producing at full throttle and had signed contracts to produce more and more every year, thinking the good times would never end....
 
Tootsie Bear dijo:
That's something I notice whenever I watch those videos of people opening Pokemon cards. Like the majority are not worth much. Most around $20. Maybe a hundred plus if you're really lucky.
Presiona para expandir...
I'm not a expert but from what I gleamed old sets have very little value beyond obvious stuff like first run charzards.

The real value is stuff from midlife to current where there are alternative art chase cards. Those are the money cards.

It's a weirdly consumer friendly compromise. The degenerate gamblers and whales get their special cards. While people who just wanna play can get almost any top tier deck for 60$
 
Daddy's Little Kitten dijo:
If you told 11 year old me in 1999 that Pokémon cards were gonna be so valuable, I would've saved them.
Presiona para expandir...

It's because people are now treating the hobby like fucking slot machines rather than a trading card game.

There are parents now giving their kids gambling problems by embracing the whole ripping boxes fad.
 
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