In a tale straight out of a Hollywood heist film, two men have been sentenced in connection to the audacious theft of rare baseball cards worth a staggering $2.1 million from a Strongsville hotel earlier this year. The gravity of their actions reverberated through the courtroom as justice was served.
Jacob R. Paxton, a 28-year-old from Brunswick, found himself at the center of the crime. Having worked at the hotel, he pleaded guilty to aggravated theft in October. The court handed down a sentence of four to six years in prison, followed by two to five years of community control. Paxton’s saga of criminality also involved shelling out over $89,000 in restitution. As a silver lining, a second charge of tampering with evidence was dropped as part of his plea bargain.
The caper took place when a shipment of these prized collectibles, dispatched by vintage sports card dealer Memory Lane Inc., landed at the Best Western Plus hotel on Royalton Road on April 17. The delivery was slated for a sports card expo at the Brunswick Auto Mart Arena situated nearby. Painted as a true inside job, prosecutors pinned the theft on Paxton, who had illicitly sifted through the parcels entrusted to the hotel and made off with the precious cards.
Facing the music in court, Paxton expressed remorse for his misdeeds. With a heavy heart, he spoke of his regret: “I just want to say that I’m very sorry to the victim, and this doesn’t show who I am. I have a 2-year-old…it’s just me and him. I’ve been doing my very best. I wasn’t honest with the detectives at first that I had [the cards]. I should have been. I was just scared.”
After the clandestine act, Paxton passed the stolen cards into the hands of Jason Bowling, a 51-year-old from Cleveland. In what seemed like a stroke of misguided luck, Bowling’s attorney, Jaye Schlachet, insisted that Bowling genuinely believed the cards had been salvaged from a dumpster and was oblivious to their pilfered origins.
The wheels of justice turned swiftly, culminating in a search warrant executed at Bowling’s residence on May 23. All but two of the stolen cards were successfully retrieved during the operation. A versatile array of investigative tools such as phone records, surveillance footage, GPS data, and witness testimonies knitted together the tale, implicating both men in the grand scheme of theft.
Bowling opted for a guilty plea in October, admitting to the charge of receiving stolen property. In a comparatively lighter punitive outcome, he was sentenced to a year of community control, navigating the aftermath of a misstep that entangled him in the shadowy world of stolen treasures.
The repercussions of the heist were not confined to the perpetrators alone. The ripples of the crime extended far and wide, inflicting substantial financial and reputational blows on Memory Lane Inc. The fallout was vividly captured in a victim impact statement, revealing that the company suffered a setback in the form of a lost $2 million loan and an additional $100,000 in interest, all while grappling with a tarnished reputation.
Despite the curtain falling on this daring escapade, the saga of the $2.1 million baseball card heist remains incomplete. Two of the pilfered cards – a 1909 T204 Ramly Walter Johnson card sporting a PSA grade of 5 and certificate No. 90586922, and a 1941 Play Ball No. 14 Ted Williams card in near-mint-to-mint condition with a PSA grade of 8 and certificate No. 05159693 – continue to play elusive games of hide-and-seek.
To aid in the recovery efforts, the public is implored to reach out to Strongsville police at 440-580-3247, citing report No. 2024-000693 if they possess any information regarding the whereabouts of the missing cards. The search goes on for these elusive treasures, as the mystery surrounding their disappearance persists in the annals of high-stakes theft history.
