Laced Connection shoe store owner Chad Steward tricks burglars with deceptive tactic

A Fort Worth, Texas, shoe store was burglarized Friday morning, but due to security measures taken by the shop owner, the culprits ended up getting bamboozled.

Laced Connection owner Chad Steward posted a surveillance video of the burglary on Facebook Sunday, which showed three men rummaging through the stockroom filled with shoe boxes.

In particular, the men were bagging boxes of Yeezys, Nikes and other high-end sneakers.

At one point, the men began to open the boxes and realized there was only one shoe in each of them.

In an interview with KDFW, Steward showed the reporter broken glass

“I’d assume they were either up here kicking it, punching it or doing something,” he said.

After failing to get through the window, the men broke through a door with two padlocks, and Steward said he thinks the suspects took a crowbar to force their way inside.

Once inside, the burglars were only able to get to the back stockroom where there were hundreds of shoe boxes stacked on shelves. To get to the sales floor, the culprits would have needed to get through another steel gate.

“It would have taken them a good while to get in,” Steward told KDFW. “I’m just happy I had the preventatives I did.”

If locks, gates, bars, and security alarms were not enough to try to deter the crooks from burglarizing Laced Connection, Steward took another measure by only putting one shoe in each of the boxes.

In the surveillance video the men appear to continue rummaging through the stockroom while looking for particular sizes before leaving through the back door with single-shoe boxes.

Steward told KDFW the video makes him angry, and he has posted the video to social media with hopes of police arresting three individuals.

In fact, Steward is offering a $1,000 reward for any information on the individuals, or the shoes taken from his store.

“I do want them caught… I want them put in jail. It’s not right,” he added.