pleading guilty in May 2025<\/a> to theft, and was required to pay $27,000 in restitution after he and Andrew Giaume were caught on camera taking $300,000 worth of gaming and trading cards from an August 2023 convention.<\/p>\nAndrew Giaume accused Thomas Dunbar of defamation in a $10 million lawsuit. IMPD News\/Facebook<\/p>\n
But Giaume insists in a new Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit that he thought Dunbar had legitimately bought the cards at the annual Gen Con gathering.<\/p>\n
The two New Yorkers, both 42, had been friends since middle school, and for the past eight years went to the Indianapolis convention \u2014 where fans buy and sell wildly popular and collectible cards such as Pok\u00e9mon, and Magic: The Gathering, Giaume said in court papers.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until Dunbar\u2019s image was splashed online in articles about the theft while the two were still in Indianapolis that Giaume knew something was up, he claimed in the $10 million lawsuit against his ex-pal.<\/p>\n
When he confronted Dunbar, Giuame claimed in legal papers that his friend \u201cwent pale,\u201d insisting the articles must have been a mistake, and \u201cbegan packing his bags in a frenzy\u201d before running off to catch a flight home.<\/p>\n
So Giuame was shocked when Dunbar was accused of stealing \u2014 and devastated when he realized \u201clong afterwards\u201d that Dunbar implicated him to authorities.<\/p>\n
The two men were caught on surveillance video hauling a cart loaded with cards. IMPD News\/Facebook<\/p>\n
The stolen cards were worth thousands of dollars, authorities said. Jeff Lange \/ USA TODAY NETWORK<\/p>\n
\u201cDunbar knew that he alone could not afford to make full restitution to the victims and knew he needed Giaume\u2019s financial support,\u201d Giaume claimed in court papers.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s already spent $100,000 in legal fees and lost a $500,000 investment in a new bar he planned to open in NYC, Giuame said in the defamation lawsuit against Dunbar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Giaume would prefer to fight and prove his innocence at trial, he lacks the financial means to do so,\u201d he said in court papers, noting he is likely to plead guilty to a reduced charge so he can get a suspended sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe cannot find employment and has become a pariah in the hospitality industry in which he has worked his entire life,\u201d he added in the papers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis name and reputation will be forever associated with the infamous 2023 Gen-Con heist that he did not commit.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lawyer for Giaume declined comment. A criminal defense attorney for Dunbar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no magic left between these two. A Manhattan man accused of stealing thousands of dollars worth of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":672574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,102777,20579,336,10476,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,8156,4837,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":["post-672573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-conventions","tag-indianapolis","tag-lawsuits","tag-manhattan-supreme-court","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-theft","tag-trading","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-news","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116269901977462187","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}