A California man is facing grand theft charges after police say he pulled off one of the strangest retail scams in recent memory. He allegedly bought LEGO sets, swapped out the pieces for dried pasta, then returned the boxes for refunds at Target stores across the country.
According to Dexerto, the Irvine Police Department announced on April 16 that Jarrelle Augustine, 28, of Paramount, California, was arrested on suspicion of grand theft and booked at the Orange County Jail. Target had reportedly flagged the scheme to investigators, linking at least 70 thefts nationwide to a single suspect and totaling roughly $34,000 in losses.
The scam had a clever twist. Augustine allegedly chose dried Goya-brand “durum wheat semolina pasta” as his filler of choice because, when shaken, it can sound convincingly like plastic bricks rattling inside a box. Officer Ziggy Azarcon told CBS News Los Angeles that shoppers who opened the returned boxes were in for a surprise: “Instead of Legos, they found bags of dry pasta.” The sets he targeted were far from cheap ones. NBC Los Angeles reported that Augustine specifically went after high-value Star Wars and Marvel sets, which carry significant resale value on the secondary market.
How police tracked him down
Irvine Police Department detectives ran surveillance on Augustine and caught him in the act at a local Target. Bodycam footage released by the department shows his arrest on April 14. Officers also tracked him back to his Los Angeles County apartment, where they found multiple packages of LEGO pieces consistent with the sets he had been buying and returning. The thefts were not limited to Southern California. Investigators connected Augustine to cases in Texas, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Florida, in addition to several Orange County locations including Costa Mesa, Irvine, and Westminster.
Police did not miss the opportunity to have a little fun with the announcement. The Irvine PD’s social media post was loaded with puns, calling the scam a “pasta-tively terrible plan” and joking that “if your master plan involves swapping LEGOs for linguine, we can promise your plan will be cooked al dente.” The post went viral quickly, drawing widespread attention online. If you think a bag of chips with something unexpected inside is weird, a woman once found something growing inside her potato chip bag and still ate it, which feels slightly less calculated than this.
A string of unusual Target schemes
This is not an isolated type of crime. Earlier this month, three men were arrested after about $1 million worth of LEGO sets stolen during transit through Texas were recovered in California. And at a Target in a different state, a Florida man was caught using taco seasoning packets to conceal stolen trading cards. Surprise fees found on receipts are also making headlines, like a woman who was charged a “kitchen appreciation fee” on her Hawaii restaurant bill, though that one was considerably less criminal.
Augustine remains in custody at the Orange County Jail as the case moves forward. No additional charges have been announced, and Target has not released a public statement on the matter.
