agamoto

No reason why they couldn't use autopen, or a reasonably hand drawn facsimile of the sigs on another book and send it in for reholder, or get a lower grade book signed by the same people that's verified. They'd have to send the original for grade/verification to CGC's main competitor though if they wanted to cash those chips in.

TATs are not 6 months for $3000 books, much closer to 6 days.

New announcement... Excellent... Except ZERO mention of contacting the FBI. What's up with that, CGC? This is MASSIVE interstate wire fraud.

You can also enjoy the black background era, the two magazine boards taped together era, or the straight up cardboard background era. You can identify his auctions by the backgrounds in the photos alone, which change over time from 2006 to now.

Silver lining! There's only a maximum 166,000 restored and qualified books a scammer will be able to shove into a blue slab!

They need protocols, and they need to seal the bottom of the case so it’s not easy to pry it open without cracking it. That’s really about it. How they are going to deal with the unknown number of books out there in the wild, who knows.

I kind of agree with you. I reached out to Rick at Immaculate yesterday and he agrees too that folks are taking his video a little far, with a promise to test further.

CGC has graded something like 8 million comics right? It's Chinese math, but if only 1/10th of 1% are switcheroos, that's 8000 slabs floating around out there that aren't what they say they are. The problem going forward is actually really simple. stamp the cert on the innerwell and seal ALL edges of the case, not just the top and sides. No one would be able to get into a case without destroying it, even with heat applied, if it can't be pried open. I believe they are already putting weld marks on the left side of the cases shipped out after 8/1/2023 as a "signature" of the case so they can internally identify it. They can't just address the future, they have to address the past too. That's a tough one.

I know you guys aren't lawyers, and MAN does this subject need some lawyering, but I'm surprised you guys seem to think CGC can be trusted to self-police on this thing.

I have to kind of agree with the sentiment. So many pundits on youtube regurgitating, misunderstanding, conflating, and missing a lot of the info. I guess they don't like 200 page threads either, so I get it.

This is where I have to interject and remind everyone once again that what Rick @ Immaculate demonstrated is a rough proof of concept. He did not conclusively prove you can crack a slab and reseal it with no trace of alternation to the slab. He admits this in his video, and I've asked him to reiterate this as it's getting out of control.

The ASM129

Worthpoint

B. R.? The ExpressJet flight attendant from Metropolitan ave in Queens? As we've discussed in the thread before, about this person specifically, it could very well be an assumed identity, a girlfriend's account, etc. All the more reason to call the FBI/BCI and not CGC first.

Unless the public exposes it, or CGC can be honest with the public with their internal investigation, or the FBI investigates the matter, we may never know.

Correct, if CGC "investigates" they can't prove anything other than the perp submitted slabs for reholdering that were not the original slabs. They have essentially nothing other than that. They wouldn't be able to prove the perp personally swapped a damn thing before resubbing. A CGC investigation gets them nowhere except possibly a lawsuit in civil court where they might be able to convince a judge or jury with a preponderance of evidence. CGC and it's private investigators have very little to no power to gather the sort of evidence required to lock the guy up for felony criminal fraud. They don't have access to the powers a government investigative body has.

You could contact your local BCI or FBI field office, give them the details of the situation and tell them you're one of many buyers defrauded around the country. Give them CGC's email address. I'm sure they'd love to hear from them.

The most important part, and the part I keep frigging harping about, is that NO charges will see the light of day until those who were victimized by the perp pick up the friggin phone and call the FBI. It is they who have jurisdiction in any interstate criminal enterprise like this. It is NOT for local or state authorities to deal with unless the perp and all his victims reside in Florida. It's all fine and good that CGC will self-investigate, but doing so may obstruct the investigation into the criminal side of the matter. The investigation that can only be done by El Federales.

The perp committed what's known as fraudulent misrepresentation by sending in swapped books made to appear as legit. He essentially made CGC an unwilling accomplice in his crime by fraudulently misrepresenting the swapped books to them for reholdering. It's a federal criminal offense punishable by max $10K and/or 5 years in jail... Per offense.

This is purely hypothetical, but from my observation, here's what that seam around the sides SHOULD look like with an unmolested case. See those blue/purple lines that run down the sides? This is what our perps cases look like. Notice anything funny about those magic blue lines about 1.5" north of the bottom corners or so? The strange thing is, these are supposed to be the imaged books AFTER they've been reholdered, Hmmm. Am I taking crazy pills?

Honestly, the seal around the seams at the sides they have now is essentially performing the same function. A cracked open bottom quadrant is going to have very noticeable light refraction anomalies that do not match the rest of the ultrasonic seal around the case. I'm not sure Dr. Rick's suggested weld fix with a little xylene would be enough to restore that uniform seal.

I agree, at its essence, these grading companies are selling a security product. An owner of a blue label book is supposed to be secure in the knowledge that his treasured comic is protected, not restored, and the grade at least two "professionals" say it is. I'd say the trust in that security isn't completely destroyed, but it's cracked and holding together just as badly as the cracks along the seams of their weakest cases.

No, there are not any examples I'm aware of. The major problem with confirming any older swaperoo is a lack of any census certified book images prior to 8/1/2022 to compare to. There are some from July I've seen, but Aug 1, 2022 was the official announcement they'd be showing images. It is still possible to find images on sites like GoCollect and Worthpoint for older books, but they are not as high of quality and the differences between an original and swapped comic would need to be quite pronounced to detect them in lower-res photos. Anyone who suspects they are a victim of a reholder/relabel scam needs to start by taking an honest assessment of their book. Is their valuable 9.8 objectively no where close to a 9.8, and f so, that's when you can start checking census images, goCollect and Worthpoint images, even Google searches can result in some hits as they did with some of the books sold by Zaneglor/Briva3. We would all be rather foolish to assume, even without existent evidence yet, that Zaneglor/Briva3 is the only one who's ever swapped innerwells. Another member mentioned that this particular scammer has been doing this since 2006. Well, no, we can't know for sure about that, but what we can be sure of is that they've been around selling stuff on eBay since 2006, and that by 2011 their sales records began to show an increase in the sale of the same books, over and over again, far too often for them to be just simple non-paying bidder situations. It would appear that throughout the 2010's, he was possibly shill bidding on his own books and putting them back on the market a few months later. I cannot prove it conclusively, but I believe his ebay sales are an exercise in price setting/manipulation. Unfortunately there's little to no way for any of us to track his sales via instagram or facebook or comiclink, or anywhere else he may have been selling stuff. That includes any of CGC's private investigators as other venues could not be legally compelled to produce records by an authoritative law enforcement body.

Unfortunately, impossible. Even if they stuck just to the scammers taking advantage of the swap and reholder/relabel scam, only one guy has been nabbed at it, and only because he got greedy, only because he left a greasy fingerprint over every single comic book sale he's made on eBay for over a decade. Other scammers, with more intelligence and tact would have been smart enough to stay under the radar, at least I'd like to think that's the case. Then you have to consider just how easy it is to get in and out of the case. I think folks like Dr. Rick are making it appear easier than it is and that hasn't really helped. As he's made clear though, it's just a proof of concept video. I'm pretty sure that once that sonic weld is busted on the slab, the light refraction properties of that seal go out the window, even with a solvent to the rescue to try and smooth it out. Those pics you see in the census lookups. I think we're only seeing images under white light. I suspect they are checking the seal integrity of the slab, perhaps even able to identify a signature of sorts where the ultrasonic welder bonds the sides using other parts of the spectrum. You'll notice the light blue/purple opaque line on the edge all the way around. That's the intact weld. A lot of census images show several white bands on the side they place the slab next to. These lines are likely visible or distorted when a slab has been cracked and opened and I don't think a little xylene is enough to repair that.