On December 15th in Seattle, a heist was pulled off that resulted in the theft of 7,000 Wii U systems. The thieves pulled up to the warehouse at Seattle's SeaTec airport in two semis and hooked them up to two 53 foot trailers. They then proceeded to start a forklift and load up 64 pallets of Wii U systems into the two trailers (in addition to a cargo truck that was stolen). The units stolen were about half of the basic model and half of the deluxe model, putting the entire amount of goods at about $2.28 million. There are currently no leads to the thieves, but unsuspiciously selling 7,000 Wii U units is going to be hard.

Sources:
Original story from ABC News *Note the article claims "portable Wii gaming consoles", but they are Wii U units.
Kotaku

My thoughts: How the frick did they do this without getting caught!? First off, airports are all high-security now, why not the warehouses right there near the premises? No cameras, no guards, nothing. Amazing how there is nothing protecting them considering this one warehouse alone had over $2 million worth of product in it. And it's not like this was a simple 5 minute job, this easily must have been 1-2 hours. However they still managed to empty an entire warehouse without a single person noticing it until the job was done. I hope Nintendo at least had those units insured. Also another thought, it's not like there is a major Wii U shortage like there was when the Wii came out, there are still plenty of units just hanging out on store shelves everywhere so it's not like it's a really hot item or anything.

I'm especially surprised at the lack of a security system. Every warehouse should have one, as their primary purposes is housing wares (hence the name), and some pretty expensive stuff can be in them.

The lack of security messures really does put me on unease, million of dollars and you don't put up a camera or anything. Your just asking for things to be stolen, nothing say come and steal me like no security messures to catch you during the act. Wonder when these stolen products will hit Ebay or other online retails to get the merchandice off their hands. I wonder if there is a way to lock out the units or track down where they are locatedd, get after the perps after that. It's just really sad, pathetic really.

If any of the stolen units go online, Nintendo will have IP addresses (which can be used in conjunction with authorities to track down owners of stolen units, which then could lead to identification of where the units were obtained). To my knowledge, all official Nintendo consoles provide the serial number upon server connection.

I think one of the thieves could be a worker in Nintendo, who has a direct relation to the warehouse. Normally, all common folks would assume that the warehouse has security, including the thieves. I doubt they would risk themselves if they weren't informed by 'someone' that the warehouse has no security.

It's probably easier than you think and somebody on the inside responsible for the shipment of consoles to retailers had some hand in it.