agamoto

The little cynic on my shoulder is saying "Yeah, I'm betting dollars to doughnuts, all those scammer books with 9.6's in them are going to be cleared through as "actual" 9.8's and shipped back. I mean hey, why actually do the work, or pay out to compensate for loss when you can just tell people whatever you (and they) want to believe?"

*coughHowTheHellDoesAnyoneGetFiftySevenSpidey194's@9.8scough*

I have a degree in journalism, one of our classes dealt with journalistic ethics and avoiding defamation lawsuits. We were taught never to write "John Doe from Buttphuk, AZ, was arrested for armed robbery today..." You had to split it up... "A Buttphuk, AZ man has been arrested and charged with armed robbery." and then followed separately with "John Doe is currently being held by Butphuk PD without bond at this hour."

(calls back) "Hello, United States FBI, How can I help you?" "Sorry, we must have been disconnected. Did you say $5000 comic books?" "Woah, potentially 350 books? Over a million dollars in value?" "Wow-wee! I remember when comics only used to cost a dime!" "And potentially hundreds of victims across the USA?" "And most, if not all, the trade in these books was over the Internet?" "Okay, please hold" "Hello, this is the Internet Crime Complaint Center, AKA IC3, how can we help?" "Yeah, just file a complaint at ic3.gov"

I am now convinced No criminal charges will ever be filed, they won’t be calling the FBI. They will tackle this case very much as they did with Mr Dickie Albright and just sue for injunction and restraining order. Whoever the perp is, they will be free to assume new identities and free to try ripping people off again in the future since there will be no criminal repercussions.

“NGC is not afraid to forcefully pursue those who wish to take advantage of the brand we have built over the past three decades,” said Max Spiegel, the president of the Certified Collectibles Group, NGC’s parent company. “We are not afraid to hire private investigators and outside law firms in order to bring justice to those who wish to steal from members of the numismatic community.” well, there you have it then. Not afraid at all! Seems like dealing with matters in civil court is the way things are done at CCG. No need for any Imperial entanglements that come with federal investigations.

Seems like quite a different situation to me. There can be no dispute about who the driver was, the work done to not confuse similarly named people in their investigation seems perfectly normal. In this instance, the name of the person(s) involved can be masked, forged, stolen as their crimes are faceless.

thought I’d head over to the NGC forums to read up on the Albright fellow. Saw this post. Audibly guffawed at the relevance. FYI, in my WorthPoint mining, I did find many ads for coins in the mid 2010s that contained much of the same verbiage as our perp selling comics, for what that’s worth. I should go back again and see if the backgrounds match with the comic listings.

Absolutely no one should be named until the matter is fully investigated and indictments filed. We have no idea who may actually be behind the curtain and it’s possible CGC doesn’t know for sure either. It could all be stolen identities in play, and announcing to the world who the perp they think it might be without sufficient proof and conviction on record is a recipe to have your bum handed to you in a defamation suit. problem here is that in the parallel coin case, it doesn’t appear as if the named individual suffered any criminal consequences at all… free to screw people over down the road.

With all due respect, you make a lot of assumptions without supporting evidence. If they said, “yeah the fbi is on it, and if you got defrauded, file a complaint with them and no matter what, we got you, comic fam!” Then I would side with your line of reasoning. what I’ve presented is evidence They do their own investigation and then sue for a restraining order and injunction. That doesn’t mean the perp spends a single day in jail or can’t try the same thing again later under different names and accounts the Albright injunction isnt from 20 years ago, it’s from 2023.

What I don't see in any of the stories about Mr. Albright... Criminal prosecution for committing fraud. I wonder why that is.

Wow, the story of Mr. Albright gets pretty weird. https://rbj.net/2002/03/01/online-or-off-caveat-emptor-is-the-golden-rule/ That's a story from 20 years ago too. Wow. Leopards apparently don't change their spots.

I found a similar parallel to his case involving NGC and apparent case swapping. https://www.ngccoin.com/news/article/11312/coin-tampering-case/

Today, crypto scams are all the rage when it comes to duping seniors, but I do remember something like that when it came to coins. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/boiler-room-operator-sentenced-20-years-prison-scamming-millions-dollars-elderly-coin

The statement they make about extent of the law sounds great on paper, but what they are asking folks to do and what they've announced plans to do with any books they deem affected seems to me to be counter to what any criminal investigation would require to bring anyone to justice.

Ah, gotcha... Yeah, I don't think anyone should be sending anything anywhere unless a law enforcement agent instructs them to do so. The photographic evidence may be sufficient enough. Sending potential evidence in to CGC, so they can crack, regrade and return and/or return and compensate sounds a lot like something any authoritative investigating body would not recommend either though. Which is why I'd like to know, definitively, whether they are being assisted in their investigation by the FBI or not. They could say they are if they were, but they certainly wouldn't want to say they were if they actually weren't.

FBI doesn't prosecute, they investigate. Correct me if I'm reading you wrong here, but you're saying that the Feds shouldn't get involved, and CGC should just make everything right so that no one has to have a valuable book up in the air for too long? How is that going to bring any justice here? I've been told that previous major fraud cases in the past, ie. Dupcak, Ewert, were also handled internally, and neither of those folks faced any sort of criminal or civil punishment for what happened. Anyone here know the history behind that?

There is zero indication any of this is true. CGC hasn't indicated they are cooperating with any law enforcement agency, local or federal. Where are you getting this information from?

There are other sources out there, like worthpoint.com, where I, and others, many hundreds of ads from the seller, across multiple accounts, going back to 2006. Kinda thought that was common knowledge in this thread already, but I don't begrudge you if you haven't looked at all 260 pages!

This is just one of the many reasons why those victimized should be submitting a report to the FBI to investigate this matter and not just reaching out to CGC. This is potentially a 7 figure interstate wire fraud case affecting HUNDREDS of consumers. One of the things the FBI instructs people NOT to do in these sorts of crimes is self-investigate. Why? Because it actually can lead to evidence getting tainted, hidden or destroyed. The suspect, who is certainly more than aware of what's going on, has been deleting ads, disabling accounts, privating feedback for old and new accounts, Comiclink has said they are removing archived listings. CGC has offered some level of transparency with this list, but the list doesn't include all the perp's submissions... Each one of those books on the list has 4 or 5 other books that got sent in with it that for whatever reason they didn't choose to list. Fine and dandy that CGC is investigating itself, however it's not their job to gather evidence against the perp, nor do they have the jurisdiction and power to gather evidence everywhere it needs to be gathered. While I don't want to believe there's an inside component to all this, the number of 9.8's this clown was getting handed out and his QUITE "statistically significant" cornering of the market on the ASM194 9.8's, etc. tells me that a proper law enforcement body should be investigating this matter both within and without and I want to hear this from CGC. A vague statement is not enough and telling victims to only contact them sure looks to me like a damage control measure and not an attempt to bring this dude (or dudes) to criminal justice.

1. Get a silver Sharpie. 2. Get a lower grade donor AF15 3. Learn to sign the way Stan Lee signed his signature in the waning years of his life or buy an autopen machine for $300. 4. Sign your lower grade AF15 and put it in your SS case. 5. Grow a pair of massive, iron balls. 5. Submit for reholder/custom label. 6. Sell your reholdered AF15 upon its return 7. Submit the real one to the "other grading company" and pay $25 for them to verify the sig. 8. Sell that book too.

He sure as s*%t is paying walkthrough tier pricing on $3000 books. Even if it were just high dollar value reholders, his wait wouldn't be anywhere near 6 months.

I answered that in the post. Not CGC.

Don't forget the scammer sold the same books multiple times to himself in order to prop prices up.