Ohio Pokémon Collector Pleads No Contest After GPS Tracker Found on Delivery Driver's Car

WOOSTER, Ohio — A Medina man pleaded no contest to illegally using a tracking device after police said he put a GPS unit on a woman's car to follow Pokémon card deliveries, court and police records show.

Kent Kubasta, 72, entered the plea Friday in Wayne County Municipal Court. Wooster police arrested him after a delivery driver found the tracker on her vehicle in June and notified officers. Records obtained by FOX 8 Cleveland said he admitted placing the device so he could see where and when Pokémon shipments arrived. He declined to comment when the station reached him Monday.

An affidavit signed by Wooster police, cited by Aftermath from municipal court files, said Kubasta "later admitted to placing the tracking device on [redacted's] car to track her location/delivery of Pokémon cards." The driver's name was withheld in the paperwork. Coverage based on those files said she found the unit while restocking cards at a Walmart and that the device was a SpyTech GPS that reports movement through a phone app.

Illegal use of a tracking device is a first-degree misdemeanor in Ohio, which can carry up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. A court filing cited by GameRant listed a $500 fine and court costs on the plea, with no further penalties described in that account.

The case landed in a market that local sellers describe as overheated. Randy Kendall, manager of Operation Fandom, a downtown Wooster shop that sells toys, memorabilia and cards, told FOX 8: "Pokémon is absolutely the hottest thing going." The franchise's trading-card line marked 30 years with a new, sought-after set. Adults who collected as children now have paychecks. "A lot of those kids when they were 5, 6, 8 years old are now late 20s into their 30s, so they are getting a touch of nostalgia, they are saying, 'Hey I want to do this again' and they have disposable income," Kendall said.

Demand did not fade after the pandemic, he said. "It has become not just a craze but it absolutely is a driving force in some economies. For us, it is one of our top sellers." New boxes arrive in limited drops. Collectors and resellers form lines. "You'll have lines 30 to 40 people at least and that's just us. I mean we are downtown here [in Wooster]. You go to some of the retail establishments, I know there are longer lines."

Kaden Hilty, 18, of Wooster, who said he had only recently started collecting, told the station: "People are paying thousands of dollars right now just for individual cards. I mean, last weekend we were there and there were people there from Japan that were selling — I forget what the card was. It was $125,000 dollars for one card."

Stores cap how many packs or boxes one person can buy. Kendall said some customers work around the caps. "I know a lot of people will take their — not just them, but — they will take their boyfriend, their girlfriend so they can buy a pack and then I know people who will bring their 4- or 5-year-olds and they buy their pack. They are limited to one and then they give their 5-year-old their debit card so they can buy their one pack."

He said a tracker was not the only way to learn about drops. "Facebook, Instagram — but especially TikTok and things like that. If you follow certain people, they will let you know when it's going to drop. They will have links you can click to say supposedly this store is going to have them." Collectors, he added, "follow different groups, they talk to different people, people that work in the stores. Even they will try to get as much intel as they can so they can get a chance to get it."

Attaching a tracker to someone else's car without consent is a different category. Ohio law treats unauthorized electronic tracking as a crime. The driver was doing a job that happens to involve cardboard that now trades like a commodity. The plea does not require Kubasta to describe a motive in open court. Police say the motive they recorded was inventory.

Pokémon Company print runs for anniversary product remain tight relative to the lines outside big-box doors. Secondary prices for individual hits have pulled in tourists with briefcases, according to Hilty's account, and parents with extra debit cards, according to Kendall. Social apps already leak drop times. That did not stop a 72-year-old collector, prosecutors say, from wiring a woman's bumper to a map.

Wayne County's file now shows a no-contest plea and a tracking charge. The driver found the device. Kubasta, police wrote, said why it was there. The cards keep selling.