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.
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