I presume law enforcement will take an active interest in this, and I presume the AHs will cooperate with law enforcement. I don't think we need a public outing to accomplish the goal here. It obviously isn't the AHs' fault.

Isn't it really as simple as finding out who submitted them for grading and who consigned them to the various auctions? If it's one and the same, seems pretty open and shut case. If not, perhaps a middle man or a private sale in between(which I doubt).

Seems like a couple of phone calls to the various entities would provide the answers.

Seems easy, but doubt Graders or Auction Houses will divulge that information. It's not going to be public information.

My hope is that they are already moving on that as we speak.

+++

Perhaps they wouldn't release that information to the general public understandably, but might to one of the affected parties and most assuredly to legal authorities or demand letters, lest they wait for a court order or such. I can't imagine they would want to drag themselves through all that. It would be much easier to bring it all to light and start showing some signs of responsibility, which REA has by already refunding some parties.

+1 I'm surprised Brian Dwyer has not chimed in

I agree with this, to a point. I think there is a systemic problem with blindly trusting third party grading. It's far too easy for a seller, AH or otherwise, to hide behind the fact that it was given a green light by a "professional grader/authenticator" and try to wash their hands of all liability. IMO, if you accept money for something, regardless of where you are in the chain, you need to be at least partially responsible for its legitimacy.

I think it sort has been all along anyways, but certainly will be from now, for me to just assume an auto is fake until I have been convinced otherwise, which will now be pretty much impossible since that was the whole point of third party grading to begin with.

The AH and TPA MUST go to law enforcement. This has to be nipped now and the guilty party or parties must be prosecuted and imprisoned.

+1!!!

If the money amount is high the FBI should be the LE contacted.

http://www.net54baseball.com/showpos...7&postcount=98

So these are on eBay right now...feels like there should be a moratorium on selling these until dust settles. Just my $.02.

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A very good hobby friend has said this to me via an email:

"Rich, there was a lot more than one forger and has been going on for a long time, they have been doing tons of Goudey cards too. Ever since signed cards got hot they switched gears from single-signed balls to cards because they were easier and cheaper, I used to get at least a few emails a week for opinions on signed cards and I always said the same. Rarely did collectors get them signed and too easy for forgers to make a quick buck by turning a beat-up $5.00 card into 10k or more and they could do 20 of them and if only one passed tpa they made bank."

Well guess it may depend on how it hits their bottom lines moving forward...and if the LEO's involve themselves in to the party,,,

We didn't learn much from Operation Bullpen, did we? Over and over, people are going to fall for fraud because wishful thinking trumps common sense.

A friend of mine has speculated that the forger is a member of 54. He has no evidence and said he did not have someone in mind, just a random thought. If so I would think he has a one-way ticket to a country without an extradition treaty by now :) :D. If the FBI does truly get involved this seems like it will wind up as an open and shut case, with a lengthy prison sentence at the end of that tunnel, not to mention high legal fees. I would also think asset seizure to make restitution.

Let us all hope he is wrong. And if not, may god have mercy on this forger’s soul because no one here will.

So if I sell an expensive TPG graded card on ebay, and a year later the buyer cracks it out looking for a bump but it gets rejected, should he be able to come back to me and demand a refund?

Pie in the sky thoughts. I have said this at least a half dozen times, it’s not law enforcement who charges cases, it’s district attorneys and US attorneys. If these attorneys could care less about negotiating light sentances for violent crime do you really think they’re going to care about a baseball card autograph forgery case. For everyone who continues to make these comments, please wake up and smell the coffee.

Jason,
I have worked with more than one LE person in autograph cases and I know they have been very diligent in pursuing criminals.
But you are correct about the US Atty and district attorney. I and others here know of one instance where vigorous work by LE led to a dropped ball by a US Atty. :(.
But I have seen cases, as we all have, where the criminals have not gotten off so lightly.
And I do think that if major auction houses get behind this, perhaps that would make it difficult for this criminal(s) to get a light sentence.

That is why pyramid schemes have been so successful.
Some pyramid schemes have reaped billions for the founders.

We have a strange, strange legal system, no doubt.

All depends on the states, the rules, the attorneys, how much money you have, your legal team, etc., etc., etc....

Saw an episode of American Greed the other day about the shoplifting Bogdanov family. They lifted literally millions of dollars worth of goods over several years, crossed state lines constantly to do their business and attracted the attention of federal authorities to conduct an investigation and prosecution that must have cost 100's of thousands of dollars itself.

Had fences everywhere and sold their crap on Ebay/Amazon for millions.

They got 4 years, 3 years and 15 months respectively.

Meanwhile there's a women in Texas with a resident card who thought that it entitled her to be able to vote that is serving 7 years, and there's probably 1000's of potheads throughout the entire country serving 20+ years or more for non-violent offenses, while most of the nation is finally coming to grips that it's more benign and medically worthwhile then most of the stuff that the pharmaceutical companies pump out to us legally (and I'm speaking as someone who's never partaken myself).

BTW is Coach's Corner still in business?

"... they have been doing tons of Goudey cards too ..."

A ton of signed Goudeys were recently auctioned off by REA, and it's amazing how many sold for between $5,000 and $10,000 each. Not just stars, but average players with tough autographs. I'll bet some of those buyers are nervously watching this thread.

The culprits need to be outed. When they are outed and we know who they are they will lose their ability to deal with us and anyone else who finds the post. If it saves even one collector from being cheated it is worthwhile.

I more had autos in mind, but to your example, I'd say it depends on where the perceived value lies. Is the value in the card, or in the card in the slab? Obviously in most cases these days most of the value is in the latter. If they cracked it, then at that point they can no longer return to you the item which you sold them, which was the card in the slab - the moment they crack it out, it becomes a different product. At that point I wouldn't think they would be entitled to a refund from you and should go straight back to the TPG that originally graded it and sort it out with them.

I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race.

I think that's right. But suppose I, a non-expert, sell a slabbed autograph card. A year later, information comes out that the TPG made a mistake and in fact the auto is a fake. Why am I on the hook a year later for someone else's fraud (the forger's) and the TPG's mistake?

This kind of money might just get LE interested.

Agreed.

Thanks Ulysses. ;)

My comment wasn’t to bash on you as I know everyone’s heart is in the right place. Problem is the criminal justice system is very broken and good hard work and efforts throughout the system is hard to find. Silver platter cases rot on the vine many times because people fail or refuse to do their jobs.

Some of the hardest work for investigating hobby crimes comes from members of this board. The best thing to do is put these people on blast and publicly shame the hell out of them. If prosecution happens, great. If not, the hobby still gets its pound of flesh. The authentication companies and auctions have nothing to gain from publicizing this. This publicity has been forced by this board.

Everyone, keep up the good work. Jason

The public outing will occur in time. The walls should close in quickly if it's a sole perp. You have to get the feeling the asshole has probably figured out by now that their scheme is now exposed. Let's just hope that butthead doesn't screw over any more people that don't realize what's happening.

I generally don't even do pre-war, but this type of crap is precisely why I have never seriously been interested in collecting autos.

Who wants to start looking for Goudeys? I've tried looking for a few with no luck. I'm not experienced with this issue.

The signed ones I've seen look suspiciously like the forged T206 cards. Same style of handwriting. I've seen quite a few with signatures in exactly the same place and at the same angle, but with different pens. Very weird and highly improbable.

There’s just as much card doctoring with 50’s and newer cards as well.

Because when you were the buyer of said card (assuming you bought it and weren't the one to have it slabbed), the onus was on you to do your due diligence before buying it. You felt like you shouldn't have had to because it was slabbed (which is of course the whole point of slabbing), but clearly that notion is wrong.... and now as the seller of said card, your lack of that due diligence shouldn't just get transferred to the next buyer and leave you off the hook. It's impossible to assign a percentage of responsibility to each party in this scenario, but to hide behind ignorance and a slab just feels dirty to me. That's how I feel, anyway.

I think the answer to your question is that you profited from the sale of the card, the TPA did not. Why should any seller be able to keep profits from a card, or any item for that matter, that was not as described? While it is not your fault for making the auto bad, the seller still profits. To me, it seems the seller would refund the buyer and then try to get a refund from the person they bought it from and so on.
I asked this type of question in another thread. Being that TPAs are promoting their service as much to enhance the value of an item, as they are to provide confidence in authenticity of said item, what obligation do they have to any one person in the buyer-seller transaction realm with regards to the change in value of the item? I don't know the legal answer to that.

I understand and respect that perspective, but I don't think it's realistic or fair. The buyer is buying the TPG's opinion, not mine, or so I believe.

They'd probably be harder to find just by the sheer virtue that Goudeys are, from what I've seen, more readily available, less valuable and more often sold in lots as opposed to individual cards, and more seldom slabbed in lower grades.

I posted this in a similar thread on the auto side, but feel it is relevant here as well.

The problem, and my main bone of contention with TPAs in my many rants on Net54 and other places, is that people placed them too high on a pedestal. The public took TPA OPINIONS, and made them definitive confirmations of truth. I saw an interview of a panel of autograph experts, from a number of years ago, where Kevin Keating, who was one of the panel, stated that he wished what PSA would give were called a "Letter of Opinion" rather than a "Letter of Authenticity" for this exact reason. This blind faith in TPAs has given rise to the lowering of our guard as to what we know vs what we want to believe. Due diligence was now something the TPAs were supposed to do for us. Unfortunately, it would be impossible for them to process the volume of autos they do and still take the time to do the legwork Manny did to open up this can of worms.
Now the TPAs did nothing to stop people from taking their opinions as fact. Why would they? The more people trust them, the more business they get.(which of course leads to higher volume which means less time spent per auto, This also means less time to do any sort of investigation like has been done with the T206s. This also means that less skilled and experienced people would need to be vetting the autos in order to meet the time guidelines for submission levels.)
The auction houses also share responsibility as they have now outsourced much of their due diligence to TPAs, for both autos and cards. Why wouldn't they? They get to have clean hands from any disputes as they are not responsible for saying the autos are real. By pushing more and more on the TPA, this furthers their reputation of reliability which increases their business volume, which makes all the problems I noted before that much worse.

No solution will satisfy everyone is the reality. TPAs have good and bad things about them. IMO, The best way to collect autos is to 1) due your own due diligence. Start by being a skeptic and demand the auto be proven real rather than the other way. 2) Develop a network of people whose opinion you trust to help you see things without emotion. 3) Understand what level of risk you are willing to accept. If your answer is none, then you should not collect anything at all. Save your money and go on vacations around the world. Anywhere demand and money meet, criminals will look to take advantage. It is true in any collectible. 4)If it's too good to be true it probably is.

In my case, more likely I lost money than profited. And arguably the item is as described -- a card authenticated by whichever TPG. I would have no issue taking back a card within a reasonable window for whatever reason even a bad one, but I'm not sure it's fair to keep a seller on the hook for a year, two years, whatever in the case of a TPG card.

I think it's fair, but I agree probably not realistic. Either way, it's a murky mess.

I wonder if any more of these auto cards are sitting at SGC, PSA etc waiting to be certified ? They would have been sent in weeks ago .

AH. Let me clarify my answer.

I think, if the person breaks the slab, then I agree with you in some ways. You sold a slabbed card. The person is returning an unslabbed card. Who's to say they didn't do something to the card or are trying to do something underhanded themselves. Supposed the TPA dropped it and damaged the card? I can definitely see there being a case for not accepting it back in that instance.
What I was more addressing was the slabbed card being returned in the same condition but now being know to be fake. Somehow I think I interpreted one of your responses that way.
I agree with Conor in that if you are selling an item, you should stand behind that item, but when the item has been altered it makes the water much more muddy.
As far as the time frame, with a business like a known dealer, the time frame should not matter. When it's a collector to collector, it becomes difficult to swallow the further out it goes. I don't think there is any one right way.

Great point. You’d think the forgers machine is still rolling and that there would be new attempts at Authentication currently at these companies.

It is my understanding that Manny found these in minutes through a simple search. For $XXX, I don't think it would be unreasonable to expect 10 minutes of online research into a particular card.

I was wondering how many are sitting at auction houses right now, waiting to be listed?

....or has already bought a plane ticket to Costa Rica.

I dont know why when someone buys cards to than fake sign them, why not change the card more...i know you willl lose some money for a lesser condition card but doesnt these valued Autos make it worth it....if the new person took a corner off or put another black dot or two on it....nobody would of been the wiser.......

plus having 3 dot stains versus now 5 dots..probably changes the value hardly anything

10min per item would time out to only 48 items certed per day per 8hr shift or 240 items per week. Considering all the slabs and certs these companies churn out, do you really think most TPAs are spending 10min per item? If they are who is actually doing all the certing? Are the name people at PSA working 30hrs a day? If not, who is doing it? What are their qualifications outside of having a big computer exemplar file?