One day last fall, Roy Lee Harvey got into a Lyft in Phoenix and headed across town. He and the driver started chatting, and authorities say Harvey told the man about his work buying high-end Nike sneakers from shoe companies and reselling them for a healthy profit.
The Lyft driver thought it sounded like a good business opportunity, so the two men exchanged numbers and later met up at an apartment in nearby Scottsdale, where, according to police investigators, Harvey showed him into a room strewn with different pairs of Nikes and their cardboard boxes.
The most coveted shoe models, which the company manufactures in limited runs, can fetch three or four times more than their retail value on the resale market. Reselling sneakers has become a multibillion-dollar global industry. Social media influencers generate hype through unboxing videos that draw millions of views…