Investigators say they found meth and marijuana on a Cheyenne man after a Pokémon-card deal gone wrong.
Justice Earl Geho, 22, was charged Friday with felony theft and misdemeanor meth and marijuana possession, in Cheyenne Circuit Court. The felony carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison plus $10,000 in fines; while the drug charges are each punishable by no more than one year in jail and $1,000 in fines.
Cheyenne Police Department officers started investigating Geho on Thursday in connection with a botched Pokémon card deal.
A 21-year-old man called officers to the Loaf ‘N Jug on Vandehei Avenue in Cheyenne at about midday, says an evidentiary affidavit by Cheyenne Police Officer Brian Wiltjer. The man said he’d met Geho there in an attempt to sell Geho a 2025 Pokémon Pre RN Umbreon Special Illustration Gm/TM 10 card, valued at $3,300.
Geho pulled up in a blue Ford hatchback with a temporary tag, the affidavit says.
The man with the valuable Umbreon handed the card to Geho through their two driver’s side windows. Geho offered other Pokémon cards for the Umbreon, but the seller didn’t want those, the document says.
Still holding the Umbreon, Geho asked the seller to come sit in his passenger seat so they could discuss the deal, but Geho drove off as the man walked around the hatchback, Wiltjer related from the alleged victim’s interview.
By 1:15 P.M.
Police anticipated Geho’s potential next moves.
Geho had a 1:15 p.m. appointment for that day to meet with someone at Game Masters on Central Avenue to flip the allegedly stolen card, says the affidavit.
Officers went to the shop, but Geho didn’t show, wrote Wiltjer.
The officer wrote that Geho contacted the owner of Crossroad Collectibles on Dell Range Blvd. as well.
Police later found Geho’s blue 2016 Ford Focus in a parking lot at Osage avenue, the document says.
“I saw Pokémon cards in the passenger front seat,” Wiltjer wrote, adding that officers contacted Geho a short time later and arrested him.
He was Mirandized, and he admitted to meeting the Umbreon seller at the Loaf ‘N Jug at around noon that day, the document says.
He admitted that he had the Umbreon on his front passenger seat, but he said he traded his own Pokémon cards for it.
The alleged victim says he didn’t receive cards for the Umbreon, Wiltjer noted.
The affidavit says officers searched Geho and found a glass pipe in his left front pocket, a vape pen with THC in his right front pocket, and a small Ziploc baggie containing half a gram of a substance that later tested presumptively positive for methamphetamine.
Officers took Geho to the Laramie County Detention Center without incident.
The Snow Blower
In a separate case, Officers linked Geho to a late-March burglary, court documents allege.
A Cheyenne Police Department officer interviewed a 77-year-old man on March 29. The man said someone entered his unlocked showroom and stole his Ryobi snow blower, valued at $699.
The affidavit in this case says two Cheyenne detectives interviewed Geho, after telling him his Miranda rights, once Geho was in jail.
Geho said he had stolen a snowblower from the location implicated about a week prior, and he’d stored it behind the Office Depot, the affidavit says.
Detectives found the snow blower behind the Office Depot where Geho said it would be, the document adds.
Laramie County Deputy District Attorney Bill Edelman charged Geho on Friday with burglary in this case, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines – apart from the other charges Geho faces in the first case.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
