3 charged with stealing valuable toy car collection from Toys for Tots

Three Southern Arizona residents have been charged with stealing donated toys from the Toys for Tots program in Sierra Vista.

The state Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday that the thefts involved a valuable toy car collection donated to the program in 2016.

The office said Gustavo Chavez, Lloyd Jorgenson, Paul Lambert and Melinda Stewart, all of Sierra Vista, were indicted last summer on several charges, including burglary, theft, trafficking in stolen property, conspiracy and conducting an illegal enterprise. The charges against Lambert were eventually dismissed after he died earlier this year, the office said. Chavez was recently arraigned in the case.

In 2016, the Marine Corps League, Thunder Mountain Detachment, which manages the Toys for Tots program in Sierra Vista received a large toy car donation from the estate of James Robert Evans.

Evans began collecting toy cars as a child in the 1960s and by the time of his death had amassed a collection of thousands of toy vehicles. The estate’s donation included more than 100 military-style footlockers filled with toy cars and other memorabilia. The large donation was stored by the Toys for Tots Foundation in storage units across Cochise County, the AG said in a new release.

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The indictment alleges that around May 2017, Jorgenson took at least 42 of the military-style footlockers filled with thousands of toy cars in original packaging from a storage unit in Hereford. Between May 2017 and January 2019, Jorgenson, Lambert, Chavez and Stewart worked together to conceal, transport, broker and sell the footlockers and their contents, the indictment states.

The FBI has since recovered some of the footlockers and their contents, but additional footlockers containing part of the toy car collection have not been recovered.

The AG’s office said:

• Jorgenson is charged with one count each of burglary, theft in excess of $25,000, trafficking in stolen property, conducting an illegal enterprise and conspiracy.
• Chavez is charged with one count each of theft in excess of $25,000, conducting an illegal enterprise and conspiracy.
• Stewart pleaded guilty to theft and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 19.