Not sure anyone has seen this? ESPN counterfeiters video Greg Marino
 

http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=21011515

Interesting

Sorry if anyone posted this.

Scott,
Awesome video! Thanks for posting this.

That's a very interesting video.

Kind of amazing how good he was. I went to an estate sale two weeks ago and apparently this guy bought tons of Marino stuff. I was looking at them and felt bad that he thought his stuff was legit. The funniest one was a colored photo signed by Babe Ruth in Silver Sharpie.

Never realized how elaborate that forgery scam was. Disgusting to think how many people he ripped off.

Good work by the FBI.

That was excellent, Scott. Thanks for posting it up.

Hopefully Leon puts this on the main page, and maybe a couple others as I think anyone in the hobby would like to watch this.

To me it’s a shame that they received such short sentences for the crime committed.

getting a little of the backstory was interesting, but the forgeries were not. i am not an expert at mantle but the mcgwires suck...i'm certain fudd or chris would laugh at those mantles. these were probably aimed at the vegas tourists.

all this video does is validate the irrational fears in minds of normal collectors who think all autographs are fake and we are the crazy ones to collect them. :rolleyes:

Well I do agree that a video like this may put three years in the people, it was mainly posted to educate people. A little bit of background on the lead forger in the biggest forgery wearing of all time in sports. I think it is interesting and educational to a degree and that's all I was trying to get out of it.

Listening to Marino talk you get the impression he thinks he was a victim:rolleyes: He just wanted to see people happy.

His Mantle especially on baseballs is pretty obvious when compared with known good examples.

I've seen his Ted Williams' forgeries and those are far harder in my opinion to identify.

On Ted Williams look at the bottom of the "T" in Ted and the "S" in Williams. Otherwise it is pretty good.

His williams are very easy. He could never get the s correctly he loped it through the middle on all of his williams.

He was pretty good at most of them, but his McGwire was atrocious. I actually was authenticating for several auction houses in 1999 after the story broke because PSA/DNA had not started and JSA only did vintage players. I was called by one house and a few others joined in.

Before the story broke I was really mad because I had collected a lot of McGwire signed items and did an auction after the 1998 season. The prices I got were very low because people saw the cheap forgeries and would not bid over the forgery prices. I was selling signed balls for maybe $100 before the story broke. Then afterward... woohoo. I got as much as $1200 for a nice signed ball because people just wanted to know it was legit.

I like at the end when he says they put pride into it! LOL

I actually appreciated watching him execute the forgeries.

For anyone who has wondered what "deliberate and drawn" means, there ya go.

+1

Yeesh. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

The crooked ebay sellers who peddled this sh-- were way too many to count.
I can remember tangling with many of them, even an Army Lieutenant, and eventually had to sue one of them, who had slandered me, and beat him out of a nice sum of money.
A ton of Mantle and Williams and Joe D. stuff is still out there and is offered to me regularly by naive (?) owners.
Marino was very weak on the vintage stuff. Though many of those were also sold on ebay at "bargain" prices.

22 well spent minutes...thanks for posting the link to the video

Agreed. The sheer volume the team was pumping out is mind boggling. I truly feel for anyone who purchased items they felt were legit. I thank my lucky stars for sticking to my guns and deciding early on to only get items signed in person. Over the years, that stance has softened a bit but not for top tier players.

Great video!

Very talented man...his painting were pretty decent. Sad to see his talents go in a bad direction. Mind blowing, the amount of fake crap unloaded into the marketplace.

His father, Angelo, was the sports litho artist.

I think anyone who watches this needs to read Operation Bullpen first:

https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Bul...ration+bullpen

Heh. I immediately ordered the book from Amazon last night after watching that segment. Couldn't find it on eBay for less and nobody on Amazon has it for cheap so it must be a hard book to come by.

I have an Angelo Marino signed Ripken Litho, only signed by Marino, and a mantle Marino on a bat that I got taken on years ago before Op. Bullpen. The Mantle bat I got on ebay with a J Dimaggio and SCCA cert. I didnt know any better way back then.

The cheapest copy on Bilblio.com is $19.94 plus $3.99 shipping. They run from $25.99 to $59.99 after that.

Both of these guys victimized hundreds of honest people out of their hard earned money and got slaps on the wrist for committing felonies. They made huge profits and lived large by ripping people off and I don't feel the least bit sorry for what happened to them. Thank you FBI for Operation Bullpen otherwise these criminals would still be in operation.

Thank you Tim Fitzsimmons for heading the Operation Bullpen.
I have talked with Tim on many occasions. He has retired from the FBI.
Tim and I and a couple of the members here are very unhappy with the way the government has dropped the ball on a major recent case.

hi richard
 

how about coaches corner ???

I could honestly watch this stuff all day. Such a great video. Wish it was longer though.

Clearly the forgeries have not stopped, but I don't think they are or may never again be at the same level the Marino operation operated at. I'm not sure how Coaches Corner continues to quite obviously offer up that crap and still skate. How long can you hide behind an "opinion" when it's rather obvious they are either making these items or they know who is doing it? There are smart people at the FBI, even they know that Matty, Josh Gibson and Joe Jackson weren't prolific signers.

In my opinion, the situation is worse and fakes are more prolific now.

The "Florida" forgery operation has pumped out huge quantities that dwarf what Marino did.

+1 for sure!!!!

I watched the video and couldnt help but think that Marino could start up again if desperate enough. He doesn't much remorse for all the people he helped cheat.

He clearly can still do the signatures because they showed his hand doing lots of different sigs during that segment.

Are these the people selling the crap in Vegas and other tourist trap areas?

Yes... the ones that often come with the giant "forensic expert" holograms.

Gallery style tourist traps... antique shops... ebay wholesalers... they are everywhere.

Yes Steve, they are everywhere, like a communicable disease. They are all over ebay and they also drop ship boxes of crap to small town auctioneers, offering them large commissions to make sales.

Richard,Chris and I talked about the Florida ring. It is estimated that they have sold well over 25 million/ The interesting part about this is the FBI in Florida had it handed over to them from Arizona in a bow. They just walked a way from it.:mad::mad::mad::mad:

It was handed to them by Tim Fitzsimmons and others.
Physical evidence was provided but little was done.
And the amount quoted by Shelly is not hyperbole. It might not be quite that high but it is quite high nonetheless.
We are pretty sure the Florida ring top people are probably driving Mercedes now.

Richard, that was a rough total from Phoenix over four years ago.

Does anyone know why the FBI in Florida decided to drop it?

We where told that they where to busy with other things to be bothered with this.:eek:

Just keep at it. Someone will listen. I believe that recently many FBI agents have probably been assigned to the Las Vegas shooting nightmare. Unfortunately for us collectors there are more important things in life than a fake autograph or card. We can only hope that our few FBI Agents, who do work in our area, are able to convince agents in other regions to take these hobby cases. I don't think that is an easy task, quite honestly.

I agree, Leon, but this case was started and handed to them on a silver platter over five years ago.

Has nothing to do with recent events.

+++++

Gotcha.....didn't know the timeline for ya'lls issue you were working on. The authorities I normally talk to have been quite tied up recently. I figure others are probably busy too. I just don't think our hobby gets a ton of love from authorities in general (to go after the bad guys) besides the one Special Agent, Brian B, who spoke at the Net54 Dinner a few months ago. He said he is able to devote about 30% of his time to the hobby. We need more Agents working in our hobby is the problem....

Tim Fitzsimmons was the #1 FBI man for this. He led the case against Marino. Several of us here have worked with him.
This case was started by Tim and given to Florida Feds and they dropped the ball despite much evidence. Tim told several of us that he was EXTREMELY annoyed and frustrated by their actions.
The thievery still goes on.

And they (in Florida) also allowed the "Statute Of Limitations" to expire.

While I do have a "slight chuckle", it is amazing how effortlessly he was able to recreate the Mantle signature....and so many others. To quote Maxwell Smart "If only he would have used his talent for good instead of evil":)

Bump

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

That was the part of the video that I found to be the most educational. Watching him sign 'Babe Ruth' and seeing the wavering results - just the final stroke of the 'R' was enough, but these balls still show up in the major auction houses repeatedly, with all the characteristics of a 'deliberate and drawn' autograph.

I don't know modern Mantles or Williams', but the 'B' in Ruth is horrible and the Gehrigs are also horrible. I have never understood why anyone bought either of these forgeries. The shellacked balls are equally horrible.

Operation Bullpen was a success because of the immense amount of coordination and resources that were expended by law enforcement. Despite all of that, it all hinged on the confidential informants that wore wires and were able to catch the forgers discussing the crime on tape. Had there been no informants and no tapes, they might have walked.

Forgery of sports memorabilia is one of the more difficult criminal cases to prosecute, because autographs can never be authenticated with 100% certainty. Everything is an opinion. Yet, criminal cases are subject to the highest evidentiary burden. It has to be "beyond a reasonable doubt." Being 99% sure someone forged autographs isn't good enough.

These cases drain a lot of resources because of this.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt Percent
 

Beyond a reasonable doubt-

I don't know about that but maybe a board lawyer will know. According to Google 98%-99% is good....
.

Whereas, in a civil trial, a party may prevail with as little as 51 percent probability (a preponderance), those legal authorities who venture to assign a numerical value to “beyond a reasonable doubt” place it in the certainty range of 98 or 99 percent.

.

Probably if they have a mountain of circumstantial evidence, I can see that being good enough for a jury. Also depends on how good the defense lawyers are (vs. just a public defender). From the perspective of the prosecutor, they want to be as close to 100% sure before they bring the case, to avoid flushing time and resources down the drain.

How good he was? He sucked. Only the uneducated were fooled by his crap.
(Of course there are sh*tloads of uneducated walking around,)

+1

+2

The "just a public defender" comment is absurd. Some of the best and brightest criminal defense attorneys are public defenders.


- a former, private criminal defense attorney

I was discussing the green 27 Yankees forged ball with my gf and she was confused as to why anyone would buy something like that, given the expert resources on this forum.

The people who buy that stuff don't come here. The letters are enough for them.

Sorry to disagree with you counselor. If you use a public defender....You are a MORON:D

Great video...I remember exchanging emails and eventually purchasing some authentic items from the undercover agent in this case (John Ferreira) after he retired and opened his own shop up in Oregon.

I decided to look him up after watching the video as it's been several years since we last spoke and was saddened to learn he passed away in February. I wanted to pass this along in case anyone else spoke or bought from John. He was a great man and did a ton for the hobby.

http://www.nmplimited.com/obituaries...A?obId=2978288

When you get to a court case, you can do such things as ink chemicals identification and dating that can scientifically and definitively prove forgery, but that are not done in normal hobby examination because of the time/cost.

It's worthy to side note that science is excellent at forgery detection, but has limits in authentication. For example, if the canvas and paint is scientifically shown to be from the 1900s, that in and of itself proves the Rembrandt painting is a fake. However, if the canvas and paint are shown to be from the correct period, that is important if not essential evidence but not proof in and of itself that the painting was by Rembrandt.

I think what you are saying is, it's easier to prove something is not real than it is to prove something is real.

Even with all that, how do you prove intent? Assuming there is no smoking gun?

I didn't mean to say that public defenders are bad lawyers. The problem with PD's is that their case loads are very large relative to their low pay and they don't have time to focus on each case fully compared to a private lawyer.

I was collecting McGwire for several years before Operation Bullpen started. I managed to get "hired" by several auction houses after the story broke to check out their McGwire signatures. What amazed me in the video is that while he was pretty good at forging a lot of different players, his McGwire was so bad I thought anyone could see it!

My favorite autograph in my collection.

A copy of the book Operation Bullpen signed by Tim Fitzsimmons.



Attachment 326947

Very nice my friend, very nice.

Thank you, Richard.