The hobby has, IMO, handed out an insane number of free passes. Nothing surprises.

Ignorance is bliss

I seem to recall the claim made by myself and others wasn't that it had nothing to do with the case but rather that it had nothing to do with the sentencing. He wasn't charged for trimming the Wagner and he wasn't sentenced for it. It seems to have only come up because he was trying to propose a plea deal and/or as a way to demonstrate what sort of character he was.

I just quoted from the indictment, which IS the charge. We went through this at length before. I suggest that before you continue down the same wrong road, you reread the prior thread where virtually everything you thought was shown to be objectively wrong by reference to the case documents. He did not bring it up, the government did. And he responded. Now technically he was not charged with the actual trimming of the card, which of course is not a crime, he was charged with not disclosing the trimming in marketing materials where he touted Mastronet's prior sales of the Wagner. In other words, fraud. Again, it was not the focus of the case, shill bidding was. And I would presume shill bidding is what the judge was focused on in sentencing Mastro, although there was some discussion of the Wagner charge in the relevant sentencing documents, also referenced in the other thread.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...ght=memorandum

Dayenu.

The best thing you could have possibly done, seeing as the days of the outhouse are behind us.

I considered the outhouse, but I thought that would be insulting to excrement. His infatuation with Lifson and a number of errors about cards were forgivable, but spending much of the text implying card collectors are racists because they are able to recognize obvious reprints was just too dumb to waste bookshelf space with.

100%. As I was watching the video, I kept thinking "WHAT, there was an uncut sheet of T206s and somebody cut it up????"

A halfway decent interviewer would automatically have gone there. Mastro was jovial and in a talkative mood. The interviewer should have asked more about the original uncut sheet with a single question… and then shut up and let Mastro expound on it. But because he was mercilessly interrupted, cut-off and redirected (for the interviewer to talk about himself) I guess this critical part of the story has to remain a mystery.

Enough about you. Now, let's talk about ME.

LOLOLOL. So are you suggesting that this was not a good double down bet by Snowman?

I'll go one step further. I'm tripling down on my claim. Peter's take is bullshit. And there are numerous lawyers in the hobby that disagree with his take as well. Mastro was not charged or sentenced for trimming the Wagner or for not disclosing said trimming. Period.

Not my "take" bro, read the indictment. Tell me which words you don't understand. Better yet, tell me what words support your position. As for sentencing, I already said clearly I didn't think it was much if any of a factor. You can bluster and BS all you want but it doesn't change the document. Once more, with feeling:

11. It was further part of the scheme that in marketing materials distributed
on behalf of Mastro Auctions, which were intended to portray Mastro Auctions to
potential bidders and consignors as a premier seller of valuable items for which a
strong market existed, defendant MASTRO represented that Mastro Auctions had sold
the most expensive baseball card in the world, a Honus Wagner T-206 card. In making
this representation, however, defendant MASTRO knowingly omitted the material fact
that defendant MASTRO had altered the baseball card by cutting the sides of the card
in a manner that, if disclosed, would have significantly reduced the value of the card.

Period. :)

What does the indictment have to do with this conversation? You can put whatever you want in an indictment. What matters is what he was actually found guilty of and sentenced for. That's what we're talking about. Show me where I can find something along the lines of the jury saying "As to count #11, we the jury find the charge of the defendant trimming the Honus Wagner baseball card and failing to disclose said alteration upon selling it: GUILTY".

You can't because it didn't happen.

I'm not saying it wasn't brought up at trial. I'm saying he wasn't sentenced for it and he didn't go to prison for it.

Geez, even the official U.S. Attorney's Office press release discussing the sentence talks about the Wagner.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr...l-bidding-scam

You have no clue Travis. Geez. Stop moving the goalposts. You claimed he wasn't CHARGED with it. Post 91 and many prior posts to the same effect. The indictment is precisely the document that sets out the CHARGES against him. So yes, he was CHARGED with it. The indictment has everything to do with this conversation. He then pleaded guilty to the one count indictment which included this CHARGE and was sentenced. There was no trial and no jury because he pleaded GUILTY. If you actually listened instead of just argued from ignorance and ego you might understand this better.

Recall that in the prior thread your ridiculous theory was that Mastro himself injected this into the case to win brownie points.

BTW, as to your statement that you can put anything you want in an indictment (you clearly know a lot about the law lol), the indictment was returned in this case by a federal grand jury after months of work and presentation of evidence. And lo and behold, the FBI press release describing the unsealed indictment also talks about the damn Wagner.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/ch...r-collectibles

A definition of the word indictment:

a formal written statement prepared by a prosecuting authority charging a person with a crime and returned by a jury (such as a grand jury) upon finding that sufficient evidence to support it was presented.

Clearly it was part of the charges/accusations and no lawyer would say otherwise. As to his sentencing docs I have read...ok browsed...I did not see a breakdown of charges with the associated time he would serve so I (non lawyer) cannot speak to how much of his jail time was due to the Wagner but the trimming and the failure to disclose the trimming were part of the charges.

Reading this is akin to listening to fingernails across a blackboard. Travis -- stop. Please. Bill was sentenced for any and all of his bad conduct in the indictment to which he pled guilty. He was a cooperator with the feds and ate the entire indictment. His PLEA AGREEMENT SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED HIS FRAUD IN CONNECTION WITH THE TRIMMED WAGNER ON PAGES 12-14. He was charged with it, he specifically pled guilty to the fraud re the Wagner. It is a public document. He had a 30 page plea agreement and 15.5 pages of it described his many frauds.

Most of his bad acts related to shill bidding -- in essence, creating hidden reserves to drive the prices of Mastro lots up. In that ridiculous, idiotic interview, I believe he was shaking his head and smiling with derision when the interviewer claimed that auction houses which LEGALLY bid on lots were bad -- Mastro did it ILLEGALLY. He used fake names as bidders, employees, dead people and even a priest if I recall.

He also ran up, along with his co-conspirators, a religious Jewish bidder who they knew couldn't bid at the auction close as he observed Shabbat. So they looked at his ceiling bids and ran them all to the top. Was the shill bidding worse than the Wagner fraud? Yes, no, maybe -- but the judge knew of all of it, along with Mastro's cooperation against his friends. Again, he paid $0 back to his victims. Unless you sued Mastro, you didn't get back any of the money he stole from you.

Sorry Chase, you left out the part where you can put anything you want in it.

Maybe you and Peter are mistaken??? Per Travis: "And there are numerous lawyers in the hobby that disagree with his take as well."

Yes Peter, you can charge someone with whatever the hell charges you want in an indictment. Obviously, some threshold has to be met, but just because something is listed on an indictment doesn't mean they are guilty of said charges. Hence in a trial, the jury gives verdicts for each charge.

If you want to argue that he went to prison for trimming/selling the Wagner because he struck a plea deal and it never went to trial, then fine. But that's something different from what I'm talking about and you know it.

Find me a single court case where someone was charged with and convicted BY A JURY for altering and/or selling an altered baseball card. I'll wait...

You keep moving the goalposts. I cannot have an intelligent discussion with you. First you said he wasn't charged with it. Then you said he wasn't convicted of it. Now you want an example of a jury verdict, even though legally it's the same thing as a guilty plea, where SOMEONE ELSE was convicted. I never said I knew cases where a jury had convicted anyone of a charge related to trimming or concealment of trimming. Most criminal cases don't go to trial. I have been talking exclusively about the Mastro case, and so have you until you just shifted the goalposts yet again because every single thing you postulate has been proven to be wrong. So where are all these "lawyers in the hobby" who disagree with my take on the MASTRO CASE?

Are you that ego invested that you can't just see that you were wrong, and move on?

No YOU keep moving my goal posts. I said "charged and convicted" not just "charged". My point in the earlier thread and still to this day has always been that no one has ever been charged with and convicted of altering a sports card. You were the one who then brought up the Mastro case as your example to tell me that I'm wrong. But it's materially different and you know it.

Lawyers stack indictments full of charges that they know won't stick all the time Peter. They use it as leverage to try to get a plea deal. You can't then point to a plea deal agreement and say that everything listed in it is why someone went to prison. Some of those charges would have stuck, some of them wouldn't.

Remember, this whole discussion all started from the trimming scandal involving PWCC, Gary Moser, et al. I said from the begging that nobody was going to prison for any of it. You told me I was an idiot and that the FBI doesn't take up cases like this without very good reasons. I laughed at you. You laughed at me and called me ignorant. But I'm sure those charges are coming... Any day now... Any day now...

A guilty plea is a conviction. And he specifically admitted it in pleading guilty. Here is a quote from his sentencing memorandum.

2 Although the vast majority of the offense conduct concerns shill bidding, Bill has also accepted responsibility
for his role in the sales of two authentic items whose condition or appearance was altered. First, Bill
acknowledged having personally altered one item, the T-206 Honus Wagner card, by cutting its side borders.
(Plea Agr. (Doc. No. 99) at 12-13). Bill voluntarily waived the statute of limitations to acknowledge this
conduct. Although the Wagner card was authentic, Bill was not honest about the alteration when he sold it and
for years afterward. Bill has now fully disclosed and accepted responsibility for the alteration, and the Wagner
card remains one of the most valued items of sports memorabilia, having resold since these allegations became
widely publicized for its highest price ever. The Government agrees that Bill’s conduct related to the Wagner
card did not involve any loss for Guidelines purposes. (Id. at 13-14).

So he's charged with it, he specifically admits to it and pleads guilty to it, but it somehow doesn't count because there was no jury trial? Alternate reality.

BTW you said he wasn't "charged" multiple times. Start with 83 and 91. Sure you also said he wasn't sentenced, but you objected to BOTH propositions, not just the latter.

PS my goalposts are exactly where they have been. Mastro was charged, admitted it, and pled guilty, to the Wagner offense among other things.

I still maintain the FBI was on solid LEGAL ground pursuing Brent and his ilk, but that they must have had evidentiary concerns not the least of which was that Brent from what I infer decided not to cooperate after all.

Can we identify any of these 'numerous lawyers in the hobby' that believe that being indicted for something is not being charged with that thing, and that pleading guilty to the charge and it being one of the things sentenced for is not being sentenced for it? Since they are numerous, I am sure we can get one of these lawyers to explain this novel legal theory to us laypersons.

+1

For context.

ll go one step further. I'm tripling down on my claim. Peter's take is bullshit. And there are numerous lawyers in the hobby that disagree with his take as well. Mastro was not charged or sentenced for trimming the Wagner or for not disclosing said trimming. Period.

Lionel Hutz, for one.

Mr. goalposts, here was your theory a year ago lol. I cannot even count the number of errors here, but suffice it to say you've completely changed your theory while pretending you haven't. You did well with your first three words but it was downhill from there.

I'm no lawyer, but when I read through discussions of this topic on the Blowhard forums a few years back, I seem to recall most of the lawyers there were in agreement that he had not in fact been charged with any crimes in relation to the Wagner card. But rather it was brought up during the trial as a mere testimony to his character, or lack thereof. Him basically just trying to come clean with anything and everything he could in an effort to gain favor and get a more lenient sentence. But he was not directly charged with a crime for anything related to the Wagner. You mention that he admitted to trimming the Wagner in his plea deal, but that plea deal was rejected by the judge. He was not sentenced for anything to do with the Wagner.

This is a ridiculous statement by Bill Mastro trying to justify his bad behavior. It's like saying:

"If I steal something and don't get caught, is it really stealing?"

jeff

I expect Bill's priest, who he dragged to every court appearance, to pop up here and speak on his behalf.

100% agree. Too many people in get hobby are easily forgiven for fraud. A few even made a comeback this summer. It’s BS.

We probably can’t afford blue haired lawyer

No widespread focus on trimming?? There was a huge focus on it, and it was rampant. I discussed this with quality dealers and hobby people all the time back then. I didnt purchase PSA cards because of the deals made to get grades on trimmed cards.

Of course there was. Ironically, the rampant trimming at that time was the very marketing pitch on which PSA launched its business.

many high grade trimmed vintage cards in older PSA holders. it's laughably sad.

People wanted high grade cards, and were and are willing to pay for the illusion that they were real. Hall saw the opportunity in this and, in my opinion, made certain compromises with certain card doctors.

As a lawyer in the hobby, snowman, you don't know what you are talking about. The facts supporting the charge are listed in the indictment. If he ultimately pled guilty to the charge, unless part of the plea deal was to amend the indictment by removing those specific facts, a plea of guilty is a complete admission to the facts alleged in the indictment. Thus, that plea of guilty results in a conviction on the charge, and a finding of facts as alleged in the count that was pled guilty to, even if those facts constitute a small part of the scheme that made up the charge.

It's even beyond that because in his filings he specifically admitted to those facts.

Where’s Dmitri Young these days?

That's fine, but what matters as to what he's convicted of is what's said at the plea hearing (and in the indictment). He can admit to anything he wants in filings, but if he doesn't enter a plea on the count containing those facts, he's not convicted of those facts.

I'm not digging into his plea, because frankly I don't care. I was just correcting smowman's misstatements about the law. If he pled to the count of the indictment containing those facts, he's guilty of those facts. Period.

Yes of course. I was just making a belt and suspenders point. In any event, neither of us apparently knows anything, per Travis.

Thanks for the info. I honestly didn't know; I was 14 in 1991. Where I guess I was going was, did the average collector then look at a nice expensive card and ask if it had been trimmed? Maybe not for 50's cards. But I guess maybe if you were considering buying a Wagner you would.

So there were "deals made" to get grades on other trimmed cards even in the early PSA days? Interesting. You always hear the argument that PSA was the savior of the wild wild west scene, where nobody knew whether cards had been altered or not. But if they were making deals from the getgo of slabbing trimmed cards with the profit motive - I guess that's just earlier than I realized.

Two hour interview with.... Bill Mastro
 

Does anyone else find it laughable that in the 30-for-30, Hall just says with a poker face "It doesn't look trimmed to me..." when discussing being in the grading room with Mastro's Wagner?

Really? Hall is supposedly the world's foremost expert on T206, who at the time had the most complete master set of backs and variations ever assembled. That's the best answer he could give? Not any kind of lengthy discussion on genuine size variation, paper stock, appearance under magnification, nothing? That's the PSA "expertise" we get on that card all these years later?

Sheesh.

Most collectors today turn a blind eye to the fraud that is and has been committed and are enablers. It shocks me sometimes that some of the worst in the hobby get as much support as they do.

You guys can keep dancing around this all you want. You can argue semantics or say I'm misusing terms or "moving the goalposts" or whatever you want. I don't care. My main point has been quite clear from the beginning of this conversation (which started elsewhere, years ago and which Peter just can't seem to let go of for some strange reason). My point is and always has been that nobody, including Mastro, has ever been "tried and convicted?", "charged and convicted?", "tried by a jury?", "found guilty by a judge?" for the "crime" (or however the hell you want to word it) of altering and selling a sports card. It hasn't happened. And you pointing to the fact that it was mentioned in a lengthy indictment full of other crimes for which he could not escape in a case that didn't go to trial because he struck a plea deal doesn't mean he would have been found guilty of that charge by a judge or a jury. It just doesn't. I get that in the "logic" of lawyer-land, you guys all think a "conviction" by plea deal is equivalent to a conviction by a jury, because "Yay! I won my case!", but it doesn't make it true. HE WAS NEVER TRIED ON THE CHARGE OF ALTERING/SELLING THAT WAGNER. Not by a jury. Not by the standard that matters with respect to what I've been arguing now for years.

Why would this distinction matter? Again, not a lawyer here, but I'd wager my left nut that a plea deal does not set a precedent for jack shit with respect to future cases for precisely the reasons I'm alluding to (and likely many others).

PSA knowingly built their entire brand off the backs of trimmers. The early cert holders are chock full of trimmed cards. Nearly all high-grade vintage cards are trimmed or otherwise altered and/or severely overgraded, and 99% of them are early certs.

Hm. Still waiting for any of these numerous lawyers to be identified.

What precedent for future cases do you think a conviction after a jury trial would set? You should be careful wagering body parts n a field you know nothing about, by the way, as a gambler you certainly should know this.

Probably also jack shit

It may not be intuitive to you, but a conviction via a guilty plea is legally the same as a conviction by a judge or jury after trial. The overwhelming majority of convictions are via a guilty plea. As a layperson, perhaps it seems less meaningful to you, but instead of fighting endlessly about the law and the facts of the actual case, you could have just said that all along.

You, sir, are the one attempting to play the semantics game. And poorly I might add.

Because contrary to your understanding of the law, "charged and convicted" is precisely what Mastro was. The fact that the charge wasn't called "trimming sports cards" is irrelevant. And the fact that you think it is shows how little you know of criminal law.

I can slap you in the face with a rubber chicken, and be charged and convicted of assault. Does that mean I wasn't convicted for hitting you in the face with a rubber chicken? Of course not. Those facts formed the basis for the charge. If Mastro is convicted of fraud, he was convicted of the facts that constituted the fraud. Which not coincidentally, are those facts listed in the indictment.

You won't find a charge where someone is charged with trimming a card alone. Because as you know (since it's part of YOUR little semantics game), merely trimming a card isn't a crime. However, trimming a card and concealing that fact to deceive a buyer into paying you more money for it, IS a crime. And that crime will be charged under its own statutory name. In my jurisdiction it's called "theft by deception."

Travis likes to reason backwards from the fact that the government ultimately decided not to pursue anyone in the "scandal" to conclude there's no possible crime in knowingly selling altered cards without disclosure. Of course that's not at all logical, but it's another one of his favorite sideshows.

He likes to tell lies about the case because arguing that trimming card and selling them without disclosure is not illegal is part of his thesis for why it's okay to defraud people.

Since the first revelations by BODA, there's been a steady drumbeat of people with no understanding of the law -- i.e., Fraud 101 -- making that claim.

People can think what they want, but I'm a prosecutor. And make no mistake, trimming a card to deceive a buyer into paying more for it will be charged as theft by decpetion every time in my jurisdiction as well criminal simulation. And if you do it as a business model, I will charge with engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity as well (which is a high-level felony in Ohio).

Look up criminal simulation in Ohio. It is RC 2913.32. It describes precisely what trimming a card to deceive is.

First hand experience in shilling his own auctions too I hear.

A tradition that has been followed, it seems, until recently and not just high grade but mid grade too. I think they appear to be running a more legit operation under Turner in regards to blindly grading bad cards.

When one of the first cards that got graded, at the time, was valued at over a million dollars, they set that precedent by grading it an 8.

This is really it in a nutshell. Unless Travis has brain damage he’s just trying to convince himself and us that altering a card and selling it without disclosure isn’t a chargeable offense. Gee, I wonder why? I’d be careful buying a card from him after reading his bullshit.

Yes, that is my position. And while I've been very clear that I am against trimming and do not trim cards, I see nothing wrong with cleaning cards or soaking them in water, and I in fact prefer clean cards. I think you'd have a snowball's chance in hell of getting a jury to convict someone of cleaning/soaking/selling a sports card that has been and convincing them that it somehow amounts to fraud. That's where this whole discussion originally stemmed from.

While I agree that it is immoral, it can't possibly be theft if the victim isn't out any money. That Wagner isn't worth one penny less as a result of it having been trimmed. The same is true of the controversial Wemby Black Prizm 1/1 that was polished by Kurt's Card Care. It's not worth a single penny less today. These cards can and will be transacted at full market value into perpetuity. There is no victim.

How about your garden variety card, let's just arbitrarily say a 1956 Mantle PSA 6. Let's say I have two very similar examples. Both are trimmed, but it isn't obvious to most. I sell one with no disclosure. I sell the other in the same venue, but disclose prominently that I lightly trimmed it. Same price?

Well there is this https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/f...r=9.&article=7. Calif Business and Professions code...see 21670 and 21671. Nothing about jail time and not sure if this has ever been litigated.

Did you look up criminal simulation? The crime is for altering an item with intent to defraud. Actual value isn't an element, just that you committed the act to try to raise the price.

But hey, I've only been a prosecutor for 16 years. You clearly know more about the elements of criminal offenses than me. Nothing I say will convince you. And frankly, nothing a jury says would convince you. You would sit behind bars arguing the jury doesn't know what they're talking about.

That law was also why you see odds posted on the unopened boxes ever since then. I know many of us don't collect packs then or now but that's another FYI which that law wanted to "fix"

Rich

I think we all know why ;). The majority of his posts come down to this central point that it is not illegal and is fine to alter and sell cards without disclosure. He frequently gets caught telling absolute lies defending his central theme (like this crap, instead of arguing it should be acceptable and not a crime, he tells easily proven lies about provable events and primary source documents), but will never give it up. Seems pretty obvious what the motive is, when his whole identify here is about justifying criminal fraud for years and screeching at anyone against criminal fraud, especially Tiffany for having the audacity to try and do a small thing to combat that fraud.

I’ve been a criminal trial lawyer for 34 years, tried 50 cases to verdict, but the guy with Asperger’s knows more about what a criminal jury will do than me.

When the FBI jumped into the PWCC and related offenders' investigation the cards in question were worth more at the time of the investigation than buyers would have paid for those cards yet they poured time and resources into the investigation for years.

Using Snowman's reasoning they must have dropped the matter once they realized, years later, that there were no victims because the cards were worth more than people paid for them.

💯

I ran out of time to watch the whole conversation. Thank you for posting this, Peter. I was too young for even junk wax 80s boom, buying my first pack at 6 years old, I bought 1991 Topps. And then the strike happened. It was a very different hobby in the late 1990s than before, and even the late 90s was very different than present. But I grew up on a Beckett subscription. But the depth of knowledge on this site has been wonderful. I love interacting in this community and learning collecting history. This site is better than any Beckett magazine I owned.

Sent from my SM-S926U using Tapatalk

I don't know about you guys, but I'm excited to watch all these fraudsters who are removing wax stains off the backs of their 1986 Fleer Basketball stickers spend some time behind bars for criminal simulation! And all these fraudsters soaking T206s to remove them from scrapbooks!

LOCK THEM UP!!! LOCK THEM UP!!!

Logical fallacy. The lack of prosecution is not acquiescence to the legality of the act. Come do it in my county. Do you feel lucky?

I would wager every penny I have and will ever earn that you could not get a jury to convict me, or anyone else for that matter, for cleaning a baseball card and selling it without disclosure. I think I could represent myself and clean the damn cards on the witness stand and sell them right in front of the jury on ebay in real time too. And I think you're a delusional nutjob if you believe otherwise.

Think what you want, smart guy. You are clearly smarter than everyone else. Consequently, my experience is people with your arrogance are the easiest to convict. Your arrogance gets in the way of your objectivity and you walk right into every trap I lay at trial.

I do find it funny how it went from "no lawyer would say it's illegal." Then 2 lawyers show up and refute your claim. Then it changed to "well nobody gets charged, so it must be legal." And now it's "but you can't convince a jury to convict." LOL As if you have the slightest clue what a jury will do.

Like I said, put your freedom where your mouth is. Come do it in my county if you're so confident. The mere fact that you clean it and don't disclose it is proof in and of itself that not only does it make it worth more (else you wouldn't do it), but that you have an intent to defraud (else you would disclose). Good luck with your defense.

So now you're wagering money in addition to body parts? LOL. Hysterical. You may end up broke and impotent.

Yes, just call him Mr. Goalposts. LOL. When confronted before as to why he doesn't disclose, his answer is always, there's nothing to disclose. Taking a step back, though, there does seem to be a different generational attitude about cleaning, at least if it isn't bleach etc. I don't think it's accepted as a consensus by any means yet, but it's not on the same tier as trimming or recoloring.

Yeah, that's the kind of argument juries are persuaded by. :rollseyes:

I guess all the juries he's argued in front of are just different from the ones I have experience with. :cry: