Kevin,
Thanks for clearing this up regarding your appearance on the list. Makes perfect sense to me. I also think it adds to the integrity of your authentication service, that you would want to bid in a competitive auction for something you say is genuine.
It's guaranteeing your service : "I stand by my authentication, in fact, I'll buy it myself at a price higher than what others will pay."
There are OTHER scenarios where an authenticator could pull off something shady, like under grading an item to buy it cheap, over grading an item to re-sell it, and so on, but what you did is tell the world these items were genuine and then you backed it up with real money, attempting to acquire them yourself.
Not only is this not doing anything wrong, I think it should accrue to your credit.
I also think you handled the situation well in waiting for your lawyer to get things straightened out before posting here. That was just plain smart.
When that list first came out and the predictable lynch mob started forming, my first thought was this: If for some reason I was on the list (I wasn't and would not have been) the first thing I'd do is talk to an attorney, tell him everything I could recall about my dealings with that AH, and then decide if he was the right attorney for me.
I'd choose my attorney based on his initial advice. Guess which of these two bits of advice I'd consider to be best:
1. "Let me look into this and I'll let you know what I find out and we can go from there. For now, keep your mouth shut."
2. "I'll look into it. Meanwhile, I recommend you go to every internet blog and chat room you can find, and blab your head off about it."
What I'm saying is, I'll bet there are lots of other innocent people on that list who are remaining quiet on advice from an attorney, and I am also saying that would be the smart thing to do.
People are being sentenced to multiple years in federal prison... this isn't something to be sloppy about for those inadvertently caught up by it.
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