At least Madoff was doing so big willie crimes but tech exec Thomas Langenbach has been busted for some childish activities.
On the surface, Thomas Langenbach had it all. A $2 million home with a killer view high up in the hills of San Carlos, California; a wife; two children; a nanny; and a prestigious job at technology giant SAP.
But when police searched his home on May 8, they found something else: meticulously sorted bins filled with Lego pieces, and hundreds of Lego toys, some displayed next to bottles of booze on the family bar, others snapped together in front of a whiteboard as if they were being staged for photography. And many more were in boxes, jammed into an office closet.
There were 46 boxes of a lava-like Lego creature called Magma Monster, 35 boxes from Lego’s Indiana Jones-themed Pharaoh’s Quest, and 75 tiny Lego figurines.
“It really looked like a mini Legoland,†says Cindy Hendrickson, Supervising Deputy District Attorney with the Santa Clara County D.A.’s office.
Langenbach is a vice president with SAP Labs’ Integration and Certification Center. This is where the company helps software makers who write programs that dovetail with SAP’s back-end business software systems. Langenbach’s team certifies everything from mobile expense report apps for the iPhone to complicated dashboard and reporting tools that companies would buy to keep track of employees and their spending.
But, according to Hendrickson, he had another identity: On eBay, he was “Tomsbrickyard,†a highly respected seller with glowing ratings — 99.9 percent positive, no less — who had pocketed $30,000 in less than a year.
According to court filings, investigators at Target had been looking for Langenbach for nearly a month, after an inventory check showed that someone had been sticking custom-printed price labels on Lego boxes and buying toys for far less than Target’s price. A $140 Millenium Falcon set sold for $50, a $60 X-Wing Starfighter for just $20.
They had photos of someone matching Lengenbach’s description taken from a surveillance camera, and after spotting him buying an X-Wing Starfighter on May 8, they stopped him on his way out of the store, put him in handcuffs, and called police.
Langenbach told police that he was simply acting out of “curiosity,†that he had made fake barcode labels after surfing YouTube a few days previously and stumbling across some videos that “showed how you could make bar codes for toys and get the toys for a cheaper price,†according to a Mountain View Police Department report on the incident.
He said he “looked at toys on the internet, located the bar code, made the bar codes on his computer, and then printed them out on a label,†the report said.
According to the report, Langenbach said that this was “his first time switching bar codes.â€
Langerbach’s home Photo: Robert McMillan/Wired
Langenbach didn’t answer his door Wednesday afternoon, and a neighbor in the secluded cul-de-sac where he lives didn’t want to talk about Langenbach or the charges against him. A representative for his lawyer, Thomas Greenberg, declined to comment. SAP confirmed that Langenbach is a company employee, but declined to comment further.
According to court filings, Langenbach was a heavy-duty eBay seller. He’d been running the Tomsbrickyard account since April and would regularly list little Lego pirates, robots, and flamenco dancers for as little as $1.79 on the site. Other items went for much more — such as the $300 Harry Potter Diagon Alley set.
In his house, police found a small-scale Lego shipping factory, complete with a scale, shipping envelopes and boxes, brown shipping paper and packing tape. On the floor were three packaged boxes of Lego parts that looked ready to ship out.
But why would a high-level SAP executive spend his time selling $3 Lego packages, never mind risking arrest to save $40 on an X-Wing fighter? “That’s what’s such a head-scratcher,†says Hendrickson. “There’s got to be some element of compulsion at work here that’s making him derive pleasure out of it that ordinary people can’t imagine.â€
Langenbach is now charged with four felony counts of second-degree burglary. Out on a $10,000 bond, he’s due back in Santa Clara County court for a hearing on June 20. He has not yet entered a plea in the case.
Ticket-switching has been around for at least 50 years, says Charles Sennewald, a former department store director of security who is now a retail-fraud consultant. Back in the ’60s, thieves used to just peel off one price tag and stick it on another product, he says, but nowadays they can create their own UPC codes using commercial software and following hacking videos on YouTube.
“I don’t think there is a profile of ticket switchers,†Sennewald says.
According to him, most people who shoplift or ticket switch actually have the money to pay for the goods. “A lot of people steal for the thrill of it,†he says. “For the sense of achievement. For the sense of, ‘I got away with it.’â€
