INFO SUD OUEST. Victim of an armed robbery, he gets robbed of 300,000 euros worth of Pokémon cards in Dordogne

It was the beginning of the afternoon when I saw a vehicle enter my driveway, he said on Thursday, April 23. A man rang the doorbell and pretended to be a delivery man. He explained that the package was for my wife and that he needed proof of identity. A few seconds later, Myke Petel found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. “And everything started,” he said. The man, disguised with a baseball cap and a surgical mask, claimed to be “paid by one of [his] relatives” and knew that he had “money” at home. Lying on the ground, the victim insisted that he had no cash on him, nor a safe in his house.

Back from a convention

The robber, “who lets an accomplice in,” headed to the room where the professional, who had founded his company XR&Co at the end of 2024, stored his Pokemon cards. The collection is worth 300,000 euros – with around forty of his rarest cards valued at 230,000 euros! Back from a convention in Paris, Myke Petel planned to put the cards in the safe he rents at a bank later that day.

“They steal everything from me, load it into the car, and steal my cellphone.”

While one accomplice held the victim’s hands and covered his head with a blanket, the other took a good part of the stock. “They steal everything from me, load it into the car, and steal my cellphone, which is connected to the surveillance cameras installed at the front of the house,” detailed Myke Petel, who was tied up with duct tape covering his eyes and mouth.

Left in this state, the professional waited until it was quiet to try and undo the ties. “When I stood up, I saw the car was still there, and as I headed towards the kitchen, I came face to face with him.” In the end, the man left quickly, while Myke Petel ran to his neighbors to ask for help. He filed a complaint a few hours later at the gendarmerie, who came to investigate.

Rise of criminal networks

While the Pokemon franchise generates billions of euros, thefts are becoming more common in the industry in France, where several specialized stores have been targeted by criminals with loot quickly totaling hundreds of thousands of euros. “People who are not familiar with this market do not realize the extent to which it has grown,” testifies Myke Petel, who feared a break-in. What they did to me is probably the biggest robbery of this kind committed in France.