40K Collection of Rare Black Death Metal Stolen By An Employee & Returned

The video below features a massive $40,000 collection of rare black, death, and heavy metal CDs, tapes, and albums that were stolen from our store by a 3-year employee and subsequently returned.

While it is beneficial to recover some of the stolen merchandise, I need to determine how to obtain compensation for the additional $30,000 worth of merchandise that he sold on OfferUp and other platforms, which can’t be replaced. Over the past year, he has been taking about 1/3 of my inventory, intentionally targeting the most valuable and collectible items for resale.

This is the total amount we’ve added back to inventory so far. The value does not include over 120 items that have already been sold.

He did this by one of two methods: Either stealing the items as soon as they arrived before they were added to inventory, or he would delete the listings from my eBay store and then take them. He did this a little at a time, except for one occasion when I was out of town. I paid him to come over and feed my cats. It was during that time that he removed significant quantities of the albums.

When I asked him where all the other money went, noting that he had sold at least 600 albums worth roughly $50 each since December, he told me that he didn’t have any money left. I also asked if he could replace them with items from his own collection. All of a sudden, he didn’t own any albums except for the ones stolen from me.

How I Discovered The Theft

The theft occurred gradually over the last year and a half. I discovered this while editing this video.

Usually, when I film videos for my YouTube channel, I do them in a single take. Most of the time, I don’t even review the footage. While filming this video, an issue arose with my camera, forcing me to complete the YouTube update in two sections and then edit them together. While I was looking for the edit point, I noticed that many of the most valuable CDs in the video weren’t in my eBay store inventory.

I checked to ensure none of these items were on the shelves. Then, I began reviewing other videos, noticing the same pattern: featured items in videos that never made it to inventory.

When my employee arrived for work the next day, I confronted him with a list of the missing items and asked where they might be. He immediately became fidgety and nervous and began to look on the shelves, quickly leaving the store.

The next day, I called him, and he admitted that he had been stealing from me for a long time and that he would “make it right. The next day, at noon, boxes started to arrive outside my door, and he would text me to let me know that he had left items for me. The deliveries went on for over three weeks, and during that time, he returned almost 300 albums and 500 CDs, many very rare and valuable.”

Stolen Item Highlights

Well, he did return a great deal of inventory, but I am still missing:

Over 600 of the most valuable albums from this collection I bought in Vegas. Several of the missing items were box sets worth over $200. When I purchased this collection, I hand-counted the records with the original owner, and the total number of items came to 1,985. By the time my employee finished with his theft, only 1,200 items made it to inventory. The discrepancy was so apparent that I called the original seller and asked if I had left some of the items in Vegas. I even suspected that he might have been the one who altered the deal.
I am also missing over 500 CDs from this collection, and I had noted in the original blog post that the amounts didn’t match up, although I didn’t know my employee was stealing at the time.
So many CDs were missing from the collection I bought locally that I lost money on the deal.
Over 100 CDs and LPs were missing from the collection I purchased in Greece.
Over 100 albums were stolen from this collection I purchased in Syracuse.
Countless cassettes were stolen from various collections over the years.
In many cases, the employees stole multiple copies of valuable items. Meaning he wasn’t keeping them for his collection. He was targeting them for resale, which he sold on OfferUp and to Amoeba Records.