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Pokémon trading cards (symbolic image): "There are only a few passionate people with collections like mine"
Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP
Three men in France have been sentenced to up to two years in prison for the violent robbery of around 100,000 Pokémon trading cards. The criminal court in the Breton city of Rennes on Thursday imposed a two-year prison sentence on the 21-year-old main perpetrator who, together with an accomplice, broke into a collector's house last year and stole the cards with an estimated value of 100,000 euros.
The 21-year-old and the 32-year-old broke into the house of a 31-year-old Pokémon card collector in the municipality of Montfort-sur-Meu, west of Rennes, in March 2023. They beat the collector and forced him to give them the cards. They then filled around 15 120-litre garbage bags with around 100,000 Pokémon cards - around half of the collection the victim had built up over a ten-year period.
The victim has been receiving psychological treatment since the crime
Some of the garbage bags tore as they fled. The perpetrators were therefore identified and arrested using fingerprints. The two men expressed “remorse” in court. It was a “rash act” after “two or three glasses” of alcohol.
The 32-year-old accomplice was sentenced to one year in prison and another year of probation. The half-brother of one of the attackers, who sold part of the loot, was sentenced to eight months in prison for receiving stolen property, but will not go to prison.
The victim has been receiving psychological treatment since the crime. The man stated that he had put everything he had earned in his life into his Pokémon collection. "There are few passionate people with collections like mine," he said.