Wizards of the Coast, Pinkertons and leaked MTG cards.

[bilateralrope]

Magic publishers sent Pinkerton agents to a YouTuber’s house to retrieve leaked cards

A Magic: The Gathering YouTuber found Pinkerton agents at his front door on Saturday morning
By Sisi Jiang
UpdatedYesterday

Sometimes, you accidentally buy something before it hits the street date, and you get bragging rights with all of your friends. In the case of one Magic: The Gathering streamer, obtaining a box of cards early landed him in hot water with one of the most infamous private security companies in the world.

You probably know about Pinkerton if you’ve paid any attention in American history class (or at least played Red Dead Redemption 2). They were founded as a private detective agency, and its agents made history as effective strikebreakers against unions and organized labor. Now that most cities have a public police force to intimidate workers, Pinkerton was forced to diversify into other forms of work. Including the seizure of Magic: The Gathering booster boxes, it seems.

A YouTuber known as Dan “Oldschoolmtg” Cannon claimed that he was shooting videos on Saturday morning when Pinkerton agents arrived at his private residence. His dogs started barking at something, and his wife answered the door. “[Pinkerton agents] came knocking on the door to ‘recover’ the stolen product for Wizards of the Coast, which was the March of the Machine Aftermath stuff,” he said in his video about the raid (emphasis his).

March of the Machine: The Aftermath is an upcoming 50-card MtG card set that is set to release on May 12 this year. It’s intended to be a supplement to the March of the Machine expansion, which came out last Friday. The streamer intended to purchase the publicly available expansion set, but somehow received the supposedly unreleased Aftermath set instead.

Cannon didn’t think that his trading card dealer had intentionally broken the street date, or that anyone involved had dealt with stolen product. “What I believe happened is that the names are too similar, March of the Machine and March of the Machine Aftermath, and somebody screwed up and sent the wrong cases.” He noted that his card dealer was “more of a Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! guy,” and probably sold them thinking they were the collector’s edition. I’m just hoping that his card dealer didn’t also get Pinkerton agents sent to his door, too.

Kotaku reached out to Cannon and WotC. A spokesperson for WotC confirmed over email that the private detectives had been sent as “part of their investigation.”

In his video, Cannon explains that the agents asked him to call WotC to clear up the incident. “The gentleman there was very nice and very apologetic about making my wife cry first thing in the morning—by sending the heavy-duty lawmen coming to collect stuff. And talk about stolen products and jail time,” he said. “I don’t know if they believed that anybody stole anything or if it was just an accident. But they wanted the product back so they could figure out where the hole was. He did apologize and they know they took a lot of stuff that we had paid a lot of money for. They did say they would compensate us a little by sending us some other product.”

The Pinkerton employees on the other hand, were less cordial to the YouTuber. Cannon told Kotaku over email that they had threatened to get the county sheriff involved if he did not return the MtG cards. They cited statures with punishments such as a $200,000 fine and up to a decade of jail time.

Wow. I feel like this guy deserves a lot more than a few booster boxes after WotC used literal Pinkerton agents to intimidate his family. If the detectives knew where the man lived, they could have at least sent a sternly worded letter first. Several YouTube commenters felt similarly, and added that the toy company had probably been “nice” when he called them because he had the grounds for a lawsuit.

Cannon seemed to be cooperative with WotC. He asked reposters to take down any clips or screenshots of his Aftermath pack-opening video, which he’d removed from his account at the company’s request.

“They apologized for going through the drastic means of sending Pinkertons to my front door,” he said.

Update 4/25/2023 at 12:35 p.m. ET: The story has been amended with a statement from Cannon.

Looks like WOTC looked at the DND/OGL mess that they caused and decided that they wanted more bad publicity.

[LadyTevar]

Pinkerton's still got a very nasty rep in WV.

Go watch the movie "Matewan" to see why.

[bilateralrope]

I've heard enough about them that I wonder why they haven't renamed themselves to ditch their public reputation and give their clients some plausible deniability.

[Solauren]

Someone at WOTC dropped the ball on this one.

It appears the order of events was 'find out about leak, send agents that act like thugs, then call', when it should have been

'Find out about leak, call the individual, then send agents to pick up the material'.

I swear, it's like everyone with brains left WOTC to work at Paizo.
(Which, is probably what happened)

[Formless]

I've heard enough about them that I wonder why they haven't renamed themselves to ditch their public reputation and give their clients some plausible deniability.

Because they are still in the union busting business, and they want an intimidating reputation. Amazon also hires them to suppress unionization efforts within their company, and its telling that when Amazon drivers decided to unionize anyway, they went with the Teamsters. I'm sure even the Pinkertons know better than to take the Teamsters lightly.

[LadyTevar]

Pinkerton's still got a very nasty rep in WV.

Go watch the movie "Matewan" to see why.

Ok. It's been pointed out Matewan and the Coal Mine Wars were not Pinkerton, but their evil twin Baldwin/Felts. Pinkerton's reputation is such that I'd always HEARD it was Pinkerton who were doing all the nasty shit for the Coal Barons in WV. Tarred by the same brush, I guess.

[LadyTevar]

Pinkerton's still got a very nasty rep in WV.

Go watch the movie "Matewan" to see why.

Ok. It's been pointed out Matewan and the Coal Mine Wars were not Pinkerton, but their evil twin Baldwin/Felts. Pinkerton's reputation is such that I'd always HEARD it was Pinkerton who were doing all the nasty shit for the Coal Barons in WV. Tarred by the same brush, I guess.

[Formless]

The Pinkertons were responsible for the Homestead steel strike massacre/gunbattle of 1892 in Pennsylvania, however, and even as recently as (brace yourself) 2020 their agents have been charged with murder. I kid you not, it happened in Denver when a Conservative protestor told cameramen working for 9News to stop filming him. An unlicensed security guard employed by the Pinkertons, who were contracted by 9News, ended up shooting the protestor. The murder charges were dropped, however, because apparently the protestor assaulted the security guard with his fists and bear spray; however, it is proof that Pinkerton agents today are liable to be armed, may not even be properly licensed to work as security guards, and may not be afraid to use lethal force. Visitation by the Pinkertons very well should be treated as intimidation and implicit threat of violence given not only their past history, but modern events as well.

The confusion over which historic crimes should be attributed to the Pinkertons or not is confused by the Pinkertons' history of getting away with their crimes when it goes to trial, the fact that a lot of private detectives historically got nicknamed Pinkertons whether they worked for the agency or a different one, and plain old misinformation. For instance, I keep seeing people say that the Ludlow massacre in Colorado was the Pinkertons' fault, but in actuality the mine company hired Baldwin-Felts for security. To understand how bad Baldwin-Felts were, at Ludlow they had an armored car with a machine gun mounted on the top to patrol the camp. And that was before the massacre actually happened! However, it should be noted that the massacre itself was largely the Colorado National Guard's doing, as they were the ones who set up the machinegun nests that fired on the camp, killing women, children, and mine workers alike. Baldwin-Felts were part of the massacre, but not the only perpetrators.

I suspect the Pinkertons' reputation is partly also due to the fact they innovated the use of spies in union busting, and were not unwilling to hire women and minorities in this role. So crimes by their spies might not have gotten reported on as Pinkerton actions... but the communities and unions might well have figured out who was responsible anyway. So the myth of the Pinkertons is almost as important as the crimes they were actually proven to have committed, as that's the reputation they still rely on in their modern incarnation.

[LadyTevar]

Baldwin-Felts were just dirty.