One of the holiday season’s most anticipated sneaker drops was allegedly the target of a brazen theft in a remote California desert town.
The California Highway Patrol announced Friday that seven people had been arrested in Anaheim, California after police discovered over $200,000 worth of stolen Nike footwear in a U-Haul truck. According to reports, the shoes were stolen Thursday from a stopped train container located near the Mojave Desert before being transported nearly 200 miles south to Anaheim. But the CHP Border Division’s Cargo Theft Interdiction Program had been tracking the truck’s route and pulled them over Friday morning.
Inside, highway patrol found over $200,000 worth of stolen Nike Jordan sneakers, all of which are believed to be this holiday’s “Legend Blue” (aka “Columbia”) Air Jordan 11 Retro. Images shared by the CHP show a U-Haul stacked high with shipping boxes and their contents along with the tools police say were used to gain entry into the train container.
All seven suspects, whose identities were not released, have been charged with felony grand theft of cargo and are being held at Orange County Jail pending trial.
“The swift actions of our CTIP unit and patrol officers demonstrate CHP’s commitment to combating organized cargo theft and ensuring stolen goods are recovered,” said CHP Border Division Chief Tommie Cocroft.
This isn’t the first time the Air Jordan 11 Retro has been a target of a large-scale holiday theft ahead of its launch. In December 2017, a pair of men walked into a Manhattan Nike store and left with 30 pairs of the Air Jordan 11 Retro “Win Like ’96” sneaker.
The Air Jordan 11 Retro “Legend Blue” is set to be released Dec. 14 at a retail price of $230. Assuming each stolen shoe was in fact the “Legend Blue” Jordan 11, this would put the total number of recovered pairs at just shy of 900.
