A man who stole an estimated $2.1 million in baseball cards from an Ohio hotel has been sentenced to at least four years in prison, according to Cleveland.com.
Jacob Paxton, 27, was a former hotel employee at the Best Western Hotel in Strongsville, Ohio, from which the cards were reported stolen.
Auction house Memory Lane had shipped the cards to the hotel in late April, intending to have them displayed at the Strongsville Sports Collectors Convention prior to an upcoming auction.
Paxton, who quit his job at the hotel during the investigation, reportedly took packages delivered to the hotel to his home in Cleveland. He was arrested in May and pleaded guilty to aggravated theft, along with Jason Bowling, who pled guilty to receiving stolen property, in October.
According to Cleveland.com, Paxton was also sentenced to two years of supervision post-prison and was ordered to pay nearly $90,000 (the purported value of two still-missing cards) to their owner.
Bowling was sentenced to one year of probation, with prosecutors saying he held the stolen property in his attic for around a month, despite Bowling denying knowledge they were stolen.
More than 50 cards were stolen in total, including valuable vintage issues featuring Babe Ruth, Cy Young and Mickey Mantle.
The two cards which remain missing are a 1909 Ramly Walter Johnson card and a 1941 Ted Williams card, according to Cleveland.com. Paxton says he is unaware of their whereabouts. “We believe it’s still in his possession or hidden,” Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mary Grace Tokmenko said.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.