Welcome and sorry for the situation. If you can find someone with large adult BG for sale you are lucky. They are not cheap to buy if you can find them. I would pay $25 each for 3 year old + BG from Bruce for up to 50 fish. That would be an excellent start to a pond. One way to value them is to view them as replacements for small BG which run a $1000 an acre delivered for good quality fish. Add to that the time value of the money and the cost of feed and you have a lot.

Don't forget that you have a potential civil action (as opposed to criminal) against these guys and if minors , in some states against the parents.

The LMB are top $ also easily going for 5-10 $ for each 1 lb fish.

My guess is the reason the cops are asking is to see if the act has a high enough $ value to warrant a felony count.