Oak Harbor Yu-Gi-Oh! card thief gets three-month jail sentence

An Auburn man was sent to jail for three months after an Oak Harbor Walmart theft of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards grew into a felony case marked by missed court dates, repeat warrants and a long criminal record.

Michael H. Brown, 37, pleaded guilty in Island County Superior Court to retail theft with special circumstances in the third degree. Judge Christon Skinner imposed the jail term after Brown’s case moved from a March 16, 2024 shoplifting report at the Oak Harbor store into a far more serious courtroom matter.

The theft itself was small in dollar terms but not in retail impact. Security footage showed Brown placing 15 packs of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and 24 packs of card sleeves into a cart. The stolen merchandise was valued at $407. Brown later returned to the same Walmart, where a deputy found more Yu-Gi-Oh! packs and an Xbox Live card in his cart. A supervisor had told authorities that the man had aggressively grabbed an employee’s arm during the incident.

Washington law treats retail theft with special circumstances in the third degree as a class C felony. The statute covers conduct such as leaving through an emergency exit, possessing theft tools or committing theft at three or more separate mercantile establishments within 180 days. In Brown’s case, the charge reflected a pattern that stretched well beyond a one-item shoplifting allegation.

Court records also show why the case lingered. Brown missed court dates four times, prompting judges to issue arrest warrants on four separate occasions. Bond amounts in the case ranged from $5,000 to $50,000, unusually high for a theft involving trading cards and accessories.

Brown’s criminal history helped explain the tougher handling. Records cited in the case included burglary, identity theft, attempted delivery of a controlled substance and eight counts of third-degree theft in different cases. Earlier proceedings had found probable cause for second-degree robbery and third-degree theft, and a judge initially set Brown’s bail at $5,000 while ordering him to stay away from Walmart.

The sentence closed a case that began with a bizarrely specific haul of collectible cards, but it also underscored a familiar retail reality in places like Oak Harbor: small, easily resold merchandise can trigger bigger losses, sharper security responses and real jail time when the theft is paired with confrontation, repeat offenses and failure to appear.