Thieves make off with 7,000 Wii game consoles
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SEATAC, Wash. -- Thousands of Nintendo Wii consoles were stolen from a SeaTac distribution warehouse sometime this weekend and detectives are asking for your help to find the culprits.
Sometime between 9 p.m. Saturday and noon Sunday, the thieves used forklifts to load up two 53-foot trailers and a box van with at least 64 pallets of the game consoles from Seattle Air Cargo, said Sgt. Cindi West with the King County Sheriff's Office.
Both trailers are 53 feet in length, white in color and have the name "McKinney" on the side, West said. The box van is a large International van with "Seattle Air Cargo" written on the doors.
The first trailer has a California license plate of 4HB3365 with a trailer number 533457. The second trailer has California license plate 4EA5521 with trailer number 531841. The Seattle Air Cargo van has Washington license plate B40622K
Detectives believe the thieves drove two tractor trucks to the warehouse and used forklifts inside to load up the trailers and box van with the pallets of Wii games. Overall, the value of the theft is over $2 million, including the stolen vehicles.
If you have information about this crime please call the King County Sheriff's Office at (206) 296-3311 or 911 if you see any of the vehicles.
Sometime between 9 p.m. Saturday and noon Sunday, the thieves used forklifts to load up two 53-foot trailers and a box van with at least 64 pallets of the game consoles from Seattle Air Cargo, said Sgt. Cindi West with the King County Sheriff's Office.
Both trailers are 53 feet in length, white in color and have the name "McKinney" on the side, West said. The box van is a large International van with "Seattle Air Cargo" written on the doors.
The first trailer has a California license plate of 4HB3365 with a trailer number 533457. The second trailer has California license plate 4EA5521 with trailer number 531841. The Seattle Air Cargo van has Washington license plate B40622K
Detectives believe the thieves drove two tractor trucks to the warehouse and used forklifts inside to load up the trailers and box van with the pallets of Wii games. Overall, the value of the theft is over $2 million, including the stolen vehicles.
If you have information about this crime please call the King County Sheriff's Office at (206) 296-3311 or 911 if you see any of the vehicles.
Craigslist ad for this?
http://seattle.craigslist.org/skc/ele/3485952182.html
This was a company that contracted warehouse space with SAC. Don't thrash a great company and yes, they will get caught. They have video and when the FBI is involved so doesn't look good for the thiefs.
Roll in with a couple of semi tractor trailer trucks and shipping paperwork, looking like you belong at the party...Priceless
I worked as a temp for Seattle Air Cargo 23 years ago. I did not care for the brothers that ran the business nor their "friend" who ran a business from the second floor loft in their small warehouse. I did not like the clients that came to pick up seafood either. I happened to walk in on the brothers and the friend smoking pot in the office. They thought I would be sweeping out the warehouse floors for a while. The only man that was nice and friendly when I worked there was the founder-the brothers father. He was a nice man and was very strict like a military man. I would not be surprised if it was an inside job.
 @mr Kent You are confused about who you worked for. There were no brothers as owners, and no one would have been smoking pot it the office. The owners office was in the loft, not a "friend".
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@mr Kent: Â SAC has never been run by 2 brothers. My husband has worked their for over 21 years, so get your facts straight. The owner is a great guy.
Even if new, I am not sure I would pay $50 for one of these cr@ppy consoles. Good luck moving them!!
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On a side note, one of my buddies works for a warehouse where someone came in with a pickup and loaded it with a pallet of cigarettes. No one had a clue and it was worth near a million. Think moving the cigarettes would be hard? Not likely!!
I spent a few years working for a small air freight company in Sea-Tac back in the late 90's, but it wasn't Seattle Air Cargo. IMO this has inside job written all over it.. good chance that the person and/or people that coordinated this still work there, and are just laying low or playing dumb. The chances of knowing what's on the dock without working there, or at least knowing someone that does is almost impossible. Pretty stupid and they'll eventually get caught.. they always do. Good luck finding a buyer and trying to dump 7,000 Wii's that can all be tracked..  Â
What a joke for security. I wonder if this is, perhaps a group linked to the theft of several pallets of iPad Minis from JFK recently.
So our docks get ripped off with 2 giant trailers and no one notices. Imagine if the shipment contained weapons.
On the bright side:
Washington can finally count a few more people as "employed".
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Merry Christmas to everyone just trying to get by!
So I guess this wouldn't be the time to host a Wii party?
Obviously an internal job, the workers knew the cargo coming in and probably told others about it to steal it. They are the ones who took it but law enforcement should begin by interviewing the workers are involved indirectly.
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 @grayfox yes an inside job, but not necessarily from the workers at the docks. the people receiving the items probably told friends that work for a trucking company or maybe people from redmond (nintendo) told their friends about a shipment coming in and again, they had connections with a trucking company. speaking of trucking company, who do those license plates belong to? what company?
It's amazing how much human trash is amongst us. Zero tolerance for thieves and burglars!!Â
That is the longshoreman's union at work, a bunch of thieves and gangsters.
 @Telman@ That was a pretty rude comment. I know a lot of longshoremen who are very honest, hard working people.
 @Telman@ Citations, please.
I hope Nintendo has them coded as once they go on the internet and register with the system they can lock them out... Happen to know modified XBOX's detected by the system are permanently BANNED from XBLIVE...if they have a similar system at least they can isolate by those who get ripped off who they got it from and track these POS down!
 @Freespeech track down 7000 shipments that could literally be anywhere in the US (or even the world) within a matter of days... AINT GONNA HAPPEN. if they don't find all of them, they won't find any. simple as that
Thats what craigslist and ebay are for. Im sure they will be able to track down the serial numbers of the wii systems in that shipment and eventually they will be disabled when someone goes online to play or download updates.
got to look in places where they'd buy wiis, like the midwest and Puyallup.
Detectives should start with who knew about the location? Drivers, Longshorman, Clerks at the dock, anyone with the transportation logistics.
Dock? Loading dock. Sounds like it was air freight at Sea-Tac.
 @ObsidianOne This sounds like an inside job. The scale of the crime seems too immense and calculated. And to have the knowledge of getting in & around a warehouse, using all the necessary equipment, and being very proficient at it make it even more suspicious.Â
insurance company will not be happy
 @BellevueRes And watch their rates go up too.  Where was the night watchman?
 @aleric  @BellevueRes @ Where was the night watchman? Not sure, maybe driving the forklift.Â
 @Valerie McCrumb Merkes  @aleric  @BellevueRes And their Wilfred Brimley security man, "It's my job to be suspicious when I got nothing to be suspicious about..."
Good luck making any money off those. Â I'll bet it was an inside job.
I bet homeland security is going to be all over them for allowing this to happen ....
Henry Hill back in the business? Maybe he didn't die back in June?
 @Doloresdecabeza I was thinking Henry Hill too!!  He was our neighbor when I was growing up in Redmond.  Didn't know it at the time. Â
 @Doloresdecabeza First thing I thought of!
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"By the time I grew up, there was thirty billion a year in cargo moving through Idlewild Airport and believe me, we tried to steal every bit of it."Â
                               -Henry Hill in "Goodfellas"Â
 @DoloresdecabezaÂ
Jimmy Conway: [Frenchy is describing a large shipment of cash at Idlewild Airport to Jimmy and Henry] What about the security?Â
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Frenchy: Security? You're looking at it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/quotes?qt=qt0434829
translation great deal on brand new wii systems on craigslist.
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count me in.... jk
WII's Blow so do Thief's.
 @Cindertang ...and your grammar.
 @Cindertang So true, but it's "thieves." Don't need the apostrophe.  ;~)
I bet the thieves didn't realize how hard it will be to sell off the Wii's, they are boring and outdated. I won a Wii U at the annual xmas party, re-gifted it to Toys for Tots Saturday.
 @Ducky wiis are very popular among non-gamers. Lots of parents give them to their (non-gamer) kids and play with them too. Y'know, games like pretend golf and pretend baseball, and swinging a sword of some sort, maybe dancing.
 @Ducky That was very nice of you.... :D)
 @Ducky Boy the Wii U looks like one of the most underwhelming console releases ever.  It's way too expensive and the controllers are just too gigantic.  A step in the wrong direction in my opinion.
@AdAckbar @Ducky I'd recommend giving it a shot, you might find yourself surprised. The gamepad is amazing, and the WiiU pro controllers are normal wireless game controllers like XBOX/PS3 controllers. The touchscreen on the Gamepad takes games to a whole new level things like Madden, ZombieU etc are really showing off what the gamepad can do. The biggest thing with the WiiU that's the surprising feature is MiiVerse. They've created a social aspect to the system that really add's to the whole experience. My wife and I both love our WiiU, and many of my fellow gamers who are diehard xbox/ps3 fanboy's have really been impressed with the WiiU, I don't regret getting it one single bit.
Don't worry! They will return it back soon enough once they figure out what a piece of cr@p the console is. I know I did when I bought one! :)
McKinney is just a trailer rental outfit, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them on the roads. Hardly a distinguishing feature.
 @Mikeftm I'm guessing that's why they included the trailer numbers and license numbers.
What crappy reporting... were these Wii's or Wii U's? If they were Wii U's I'll give $200 for one!
 @Scott First it says "pallets of Wii consoles" and then it says "pallets of Wii games." Confusing to say the least.
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Retail price on a Wii console is about $200. 7,000 x 200 = 1.4 million.
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Retail price on a Wii U is about $375. 7,000 x 375 = 2.6 million.Â
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Are they Wii consoles? Wii games? Wii U consoles?
@lakeview @Scott : They are Wii U 's
That is what I am wondering also - are these Wii Us?