Toy designer charged with stealing $1.3 million in miniature cars
Luis Tanahara, a former toy designer for MGA Entertainment, has been charged with stealing over $1.3 million in miniature cars. He faces felony charges of grand theft and receiving stolen property, with a potential sentence of up to six years in prison if convicted. A hearing is scheduled to determine if there is sufficient evidence for the case to proceed.
- ▪Luis Tanahara is accused of stealing model cars from MGA Entertainment while employed as a senior product designer.
- ▪He allegedly loaded the cars into his personal vehicle during his employment.
- ▪Tanahara's lawyer claims he is innocent and looks forward to proving his case in court.
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| Original publisher | Straits Times — World |
| Canonical URL | https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/toy-designer-charged-with-stealing-1-3-million-in-miniature-cars |
| Publication time | Wed, 27 May 2026 08:40:00 +0800 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-27T00:42:55.510Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-27T00:42:55.510Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | VuDnqZT_H6Je |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Toy designer charged with stealing $1.3 million in miniature carsSign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inboxLuis Tanahara, a former MGA Entertainment designer who created the CarTuned line of diecast cars, faces as long as six years in state prison if convicted.PHOTO: OFFICIALCARTUNED/INSTAGRAMPublished May 27, 2026, 08:40 AMUpdated May 27, 2026, 08:40 AMLOS ANGELES – A former MGA Entertainment designer who created the CarTuned line of diecast cars was charged with stealing more than a US$1 million (S$1.3 million) of the collectibles, prosecutors said.Luis Tanahara, 55, faces felony charges of grand theft and receiving stolen property after allegedly loading model cars from the company’s factory in southern California into his personal vehicle while employed as a senior…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Straits Times — World.