Article about Collecting and Fraud in the Hobby

[Yoda]

Originally Posted by BobC

Don't disagree with you at all Peter, but what has come of that FBI investigation? I understand the Covid pandemic may have had an impact on its progress and continuation, but how many years is it now, with no further word, decision either one way or another, or even a hint of a possible resolution anytime soon? To my knowledge, any and all suspect parties seem to be carrying on with business as usual, and have really suffered no significantly discernible negative effects from being the potential targets of such an investigation.

And along those same lines, what has been going on with the BODA/Blowout guys blowing the whistle and outing all those resurfacing doctored cards that helped to start the investigation? I am not on Blowout, but seemed to almost regularly see postings and warnings on our forum of their ongoing discoveries of altered cards being put up for sale. Are they still doing that? I can't remember the last time I heard about their latest investigative findings/outings.

And as for the selling of altered cards and the potential fraud aspect of it, I wanted to make sure I fully understand your comment and point. Anyone can alter or doctor a card they own, that is no crime, period. And even if someone knowingly altered/doctored a card, their submission of it to any independent TPG for that TPG's opinion of said card is also in no way a criminal offense either, still correct, right? The trick and potential crime seems to start coming when the card is put up for sale/auction by an independent, third-party seller/AH the card doctor decides to sell the card through. If a card doctor goes to directly sell an item themself, say through Ebay, even if the card was mistakenly graded by a TPG I understand the card doctor as the actual, direct seller would still be considered responsible to inform potential buyers of the known alterations/restoration to the card, and can therefore potentially be subject to fraud implications and charges if they don't. But does that potential criminal liability for a card doctor dissipate, or possibly go away entirely, when instead of selling a card directly themself they opt to consign it to an independent third-party seller or AH?

If any third-party seller/AH that ends up selling an altered/restored card without proper disclosure is truly independent of the card doctor who consigned it to them, and was never made aware of the alterations/restoration to that card they were selling, I would think that at least technically they are not criminally liable and potentially guilty of fraud. And since I've never consigned anything for sale to a third-party seller/AH I have to ask, do any such sellers/AHs ever directly and specifically ask consignors of cards to be sold if they have been altered/restored to that consignor's knowledge, despite what a TPG may have graded and encapsulated a card as? And are there any specific federal/state/local laws that may otherwise require those sellers/AHs to ask such specific questions of consignors. Absent positive responses to either of these questions, I can see how the FBI's investigation may have stalled if one of their goals was to somehow implicate and charge these sellers/AHs/TPGs with being a potential party to such fraud.

But unless the card doctors can somehow get out of potential criminal fraud liability by using unrelated and independent TPGs, sellers, and AHs to kind of buffer and insulate them from such criminal fraud charges, I'm a bit surprised that the FBI's investigation hasn't then just focused on going after the card doctors. If for nothing else than to bring charges against them, and then use that as leverage to sway the card doctors to turn against the TPGs, sellers, and AHs that may in fact have been working in cahoots with those same card doctors all along after all. But maybe it is still too early in the FBI's investigation, and we just haven't reached that point yet.

So Peter, if the FBI's investigation is unable to link the TPGs, independent sellers, and AHs as conspiring and working with card doctors to defraud the public, you're saying the card doctors can 100% still be held criminally liable for fraud themselves under the way they seem to be selling their altered/restored cards now, right? Or is it possible that without air-tight evidence of collusive activity among the suspected parties involved that even with the Blowout/BODA investigative work and findings, the FBI may not be able to get convictions against individual card doctors alone from such evidence.

Our hobby does not have a definitive, agreed upon, single set of standards and measures, appears to be based a lot on mere opinions of supposed "expert" third parties that can very easily be shown and proven to lack consistency and whose opinions are ripe with errors and mistakes. Also, not all people in the hobby necessarily look down or disapprove of restorations or improvements being made to items like cards. In fact, arguably the most famous/infamous, as well as arguably most valuable, card in the hobby is now definitively known to have not been properly issued as it should have been, and deserves no numerical grade whatsoever. This isn't even debatable given the supposed standards the opining TPGs and the hobby as a whole supposedly promote and follow. And yet, the card's grade has never been corrected, nor has the TPG involved corrected the listing of the improperly graded item in their own population records. Start putting that kind of information and evidence in front of a jury of non-card collecting nerds, like most on this forum, and who knows what kind of reasonable doubts that could raise in just one juror's mind.

bob, I suspect that the FBI has their hands full at the moment with the events unfolding at Mar a Lago and that lower priority cases are on hold.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Yoda

bob, I suspect that the FBI has their hands full at the moment with the events unfolding at Mar a Lago and that lower priority cases are on hold.

LOL

Great point, but that is a much more recent incident. Still, I hope the FBI prevails in both cases to getting the correct answers and just outcomes.