Pokémon card bandits busted after police deploy drones in San Francisco

A couple of suspected Pokemon bandits were caught and tackled on the streets of San Francisco as police released wild video of the arrest after drones were deployed to catch them all.

The San Francisco Police Department on Thursday posted video of the teens being taken into custody one day after they had allegedly robbed a man of his collection of Pokémon cards.

Police said they were able to locate the teen suspects the day after the robbery through the use of automated license plate reader technology.

A drone was then deployed to track the suspects vehicle after the two stopped at a pawn and jewelry shop.

---

Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters

The suspects were then positively identified as those suspected in the robbery from surveillance footage, per PD.

Plain clothes officers then swarmed the suspects as they left the building, catching them completely off guard.

Police say the initial robbery went down on May 28th near Holyoke and Felton Streets when the sale of a collection of trading cards turned into a robbery.

Video from the department showed the teen approaching the man, examining the collection, pretending to pay him, before the victim was pepper-sprayed and robbed.

“The suspect then fled with the card collection towards an awaiting vehicle occupied by two additional suspects.”

Investigators later found out police from a South San Francisco department were investigating a similar crime involving a stolen piece of jewelry from an online marketplace robbery.

A search warrant was issued on one of the suspect’s homes.

“Additional evidence pertaining to the robbery was located inside the residence and seized as evidence,” per police.

The teens were then booked on robbery and conspiracy charges.

The arrests come on the heels of a report about a brazen group of smash-and-grab thieves in the Bay Area who managed to get away with thousands of dollars worth of Pokemon trading cards in under a minute.

It happened on Saturday night at The Card Lab in Brentwood, California where a group of three broke into the specialty trading card and collectibles store and stole $15,000 worth of the cards, Brentwood Police Department told ABC7.

Wild surveillance footage captured the trio jump over the counter and smash through a glass display case containing the valuable cards in the Pokemon heist that took just 39 seconds to commit before driving away, per police.

The thieves in the latest heist are still on the loose and police are asking for the public’s help to find them.