Kevin Keating responds to shill bidding allegations

[whitehse]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Hank, I certainly didn't mean that as a personal attack on you. Simply put, the truth can stand on it's own - it doesn't need confirmation.

I understand why you did it, he's your buddy. The timing of your post just looked suspicious as it was a prepared statement.

When I saw Hank's response my mind went back to his cryptic message on the "other" thread about more information to come and assumed he was finally saying what he knew to be true but could not do so before. I never gave one single thought as to how quickly he posted because I just assumed he had that all pre-written anyway which was no big deal.

I, for one am happy he posted because I would have been left hanging wondering what this additional information he indicated would be coming out of this mess really was.

[Spahn21]

Hi David,

Thank you for your candor and for allowing me the opportunity to address your concern—I have not spoken with Hank today but I see that he has posted a response to you already…and just to be clear, I never asked Hank to write a statement on my behalf. In fact, I have refrained from asking anyone (unless you included my lawyer) to intervene on my behalf – either here on Net 54 or anywhere else -- including Hank.

I have had dozens of people contact me over the past many days to offer themselves as character witnesses, but as I have stated before, I want the facts to speak for themselves. I realize the truth of what happened to me may not be enough to satisfy everyone but I remain confident that fair-minded people who take the time to read through the story and its convolutions will conclude that I did nothing wrong—Kevin K.

[Spahn21]

Bill,

Thank you for your suggestion. It may interest you to know that my lawyer also released my statement yesterday to Michael O’Keefe of the New York Daily News and I believe he has already published it there (online, I think).

I understand that O’Keefe is also reporting that Exhibit E has now been "redacted", but not sure what that means, at this point....

--Kevin K.

[Mark17]

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.