Pickleball growing in popularity for players and thieves

A sport growing in popularity in recent years is attracting a dark side — thieves are stealing thousands of dollars worth of pickleball paddles and are accused of reselling the stolen merchandise online.

Troy Russell, who owns “Racquet Guys” sporting goods store in Markham reached out to Speakers Corner about this after his store was robbed multiple times over the past few months.

“We’ve lost around $40,000 worth of paddles,” he said.

Russell showed surveillance video to Speakers Corner, which shows the thieves in action.

“From what we’ve noticed they work as a group taking them from our display wall and putting them into bags.”

Pickleball paddles are sold at various prices from under $100 to nearly $400.

“They’re targeting some of the higher priced ones,” Russell told us. “The paddles are small enough to stuff into bags, making them an easy target for these people.”

Russell has been speaking with other sporting goods store owners and says the crime spree is happening at other locations too.

“We have heard from several stores that are experiencing the same thing,” he said. “Pickleball has become so popular and thieves have taken notice, there’s a huge market to resell these items.”

According to multiple reports from U.S. news outlets, similar crime sprees have hit several cities south of the border. Russell says it appears thieves here in Canada are following suit.

Here at home, police reports have been filed in multiple districts but store owners like Russell have been doing their own investigation and it didn’t take them long to find out where their paddles ended up.

“We’ve found a number of our paddles for sale on Facebook Marketplace and we’re able to identify our own paddles because they actually still had our own price stickers on them,” he told us.

Speakers Corner found one seller peddling a huge stock of paddles that Russell said were stolen from his store and others across the GTA.

We decided to track the sellers down — by inquiring about one of the paddles for sale. That led us to an apartment building on Sherbourne Street in Toronto where we met the woman who was selling some of the paddles suspected of being stolen.

When asked, she denied knowingly selling stolen merchandise telling us she bought them from another Facebook Marketplace site.

“I buy them from others and resell them,” she told us.

We then asked her to share with us the Marketplace profile where she purchased them but she never did. Shortly after our encounter, all of the pickleball paddles she was selling were quickly removed from her Marketplace profile.

As police continue to investigate, Russell is speaking out to warn other shops that the pickleball crime spree of 2024 is real.

“I would definitely advise other retailers to take precautions. Check your inventory. You may be a victim and not even know it, you know, particularly if you’re selling pickleball paddles.”

If you have an issue, story or question you’d like us to look into, contact us here.