The other week, it came out that a Florida man, Jason Keating, had been arrested for purchasing a shipment of rare Nike "Look See" samples—the type of sneakers that sneakerheads pay big bucks for, because they don't hit the retail market.

Now, Nike is taking things one step further, and is suing three former employees, five people in total, who were responsible for the theft of these 1-of-none sneakers over an eight-year span, The Oregonian reports.

The suit points the finger at Kyle Yamaguchi and his wife, Shu-Chu Yamaguchi, among three others, who would steal the samples from Nike and sell them to sneaker resellers, such as Keating, for upwards of $30,000. Between 2012 and 2013, Yamaguchi and Keating had $221,000 in bank transactions between each other.

But the plot is getting even thicker. Yamaguchi left his position at Nike as a promotional product manager in 2012, and picked another defendant in the suit, Tung Ho, to replace him. Yamaguchi, not so ironically, left Nike to start a sunglasses company, LOOK/SEE. But while he was running LOOK/SEE, he would buy the sample sneakers from Ho.

It's commonplace to see crazy limited sneakers being flexed by some of sneaker culture's biggest collectors. This case, however, casts a darker shadow on the means used to obtain these sneakers.

[via The Oregonian]