Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowman
I don't understand the argument that selling a doctored card can be considered mail fraud if the underlying act of doctoring a card is not itself a crime.
People collect sneakers. Some pay big bucks for them too. You can clean up an old pair of Jordans and surely get more money for them than you could if you sold them grungy. Surely, there are sneaker "purists" who would prefer their sneakers to have never been "tampered" with, but that doesn't mean they get to set the rules for everyone on what is and isn't allowed. It's not a crime to clean and sell sneakers. It's not a crime to clean and sell comics. Surely, it's not a crime to clean and sell baseball cards regardless of how much profit someone makes in the process.
I've said this multiple times before, but I maintain that someone could openly admit to altering cards in front of a jury (even without having representation) and they would never be convicted of a crime under any and every circumstance imaginable.
The arguments for criminalizing this sort of behavior just comes across to me as wishful thinking on the part of those who would like to impose their views on others.
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Assuming you are talking broadly about altering cards and not just cleaning which some don't view as alteration at all, are you suggesting I don't know this area of the law and you do? Are you suggesting Brent's elite criminal defense lawyer who along with me explained this at length in the day and later advised Brent to cooperate doesn't know the law but you do? Are you suggesting SA Brusokas has spent years investigating activity that was perfectly legal? Come on Travis, stop it.
As to your question, which is fair and you should have stopped there, you need to understand the nature of mail and wire fraud. just altering the card hasn't yet defrauded anyone through the wires or mail. It only becomes a crime when those elements are met, in other words when there's been a scheme carried out through the wires or mail by means of a material misrepresentation or non-disclosure. In other words, it's not the sale per se of the altered card that's the problem, it's the non -disclosure of the fact that it's altered. If I trim a card, get it past the graders, and sell it with full disclosure, there's no fraud. So your logic -- if it isn't illegal to alter it, it can't be illegal to sell it -- misunderstands the nature of mail and wire fraud. Oh, and in your free time read the Mastro indictment and the part about the Wagner. The part that allegedly was mail fraud was not the trimming but the concealment.
Now if your REAL point is not that it couldn't be a crime, but that it isn't something that SHOULD be prosecuted, that would be a different point and discussion.