A private jet landed in May 2022 at a small airport near Eugene, Oregon, and dropped off two men. They hopped in a car and drove past vegetable farms and cannabis storerooms to a quiet business park at the western edge of town. Their destination was a dusty warehouse that held hundreds of rows of neatly stacked sneaker boxes, almost 60,000 in all. The shoes were the stockpile of Michael Malekzadeh, the owner of Zadeh Kicks, one of the largest US sneaker resale operations. Many of the sneakers were among the most valuable on the secondary market, selling for thousands of dollars a pair. The men had come for their cut—the value of what they’d ordered and not received from Malekzadeh.
They were but a few of the former customers who’d shown up around the same time looking for him so they could get their shoes or their money back. Records show that the local police force received four calls about the address across two days, including two incidents described as “suspicious conditions” and one as “criminal trespass.” Local media reported that at one point shots were fired, with no one hurt.
