Nick Furious

Good to hear. A little unsettling to learn that this wasn't being given priority treatment to begin with.

I'm curious what the theories are on ways to commit fraud with the signature series books. I'm not clever enough to think up any that make sense. If you swap out a book, you lose the witness verification on the legit signature, so it wouldn't make sense to do that.

I think it was mentioned earlier that Ebay may have just been used as a laundering facility for a sale that was pre-arranged. Mike presumably made an extensive list of contacts over the years and would know who among them would be open to buying hot items. Could be that someone even reached out to him with offers, knowing his current situation and that he had possession of key comic books. They may have wanted it to go through Ebay to make the payment secure and create a trail of a legitimate purchase.

Yeah, I don't think that false MJ labels are the concern in this scam. I think it's wrong grades and internal issues other than missing MJ ads.

Yeah I was thinking we could at least have some kind of thread with a vote for 2023 Industry D-bag of the year. Since to two are comparable I'm going to say that Mike didn't start out to be a criminal but, in the end, he caused greater individual harm than the D-bag who started out with the intent of defrauding and swapped books.

2 hours later, still laughing.

I suspect Mike's personal collection was sold a long time ago. Back when he still had sincere plans of saving the business.

Yeah, I'm sticking with Team Crackhead.

My gut is that he's buying time hoping to get Ebay payouts before they freeze everything from people reporting that he's selling their stolen books.

Yeah, it's too crazy to be concocted out of thin air. I'm not skeptical at all. Early in this thread Mike was posting 3 AM rants. I had my suspicions then. Thought it was booze and pills, but this makes sense.

It's Oregon. Now he probably qualifies for victim status and ADA protections. The people who lost their books will get sued for inflicting emotional distress and hostile work environment.

Yeah, doubtful a book like that was sent in anonymously on a hope and a prayer like a commoner would be doing. Would imagine there were some preliminary conversations/evaluations and some verbal reassurances involved.

Sorry to nitpick, but I assume that is fair market value based on the label in the slab, not the actual book in the slab.

I would try all of them at MCS first. Put them all in the car and drive them up to the warehouse, no worries about post office shenanigans. You can get them back if it doesn't work out. MCS is very consignor friendly and easy to transact with.

It would matter to me because the defense discovery process would hopefully clear CGC of any legal wrongdoing, inside man, favorable treatments, etc. Without an opportunity for the defense to get on the record, these things remain suspect. CGC will always own the slab portion of this, but someone also has to own the criminal portion of this.

Yeah that looks like it belongs in an evidence locker.

Can we post pictures of people that we see in comic shops?

Amateur Restoration, Slight Color Touch

Seems it was often part of the scammers M.O. to get custom labels when he would submit the fraud books for reholder. Maybe as a way of throwing off suspicion?

I could be wrong, but I think his comment was more about who will choose to use their platform to get the word out and help with furthering the investigation to potentially uncover more fraud. There's likely to be two camps in this issue, those who want everything exposed and brought to light, and those who want it contained as quickly and quietly as possible to avoid financial injury to CGC, collectors and the industry as a whole.

Yeah, I think the micro-trimming thing was small potatoes compared to this. Getting past the trained eyes required expertise and craftsmanship. This was about getting past the entry level guy. Presumably anyone could do it.

I think it will have some impact, but it will be compartmentalized. Dude was caught peeing in the pool, but it seems to be mostly contained to a few areas. Folks who are partial to hanging out in those areas (higher grade Hulk 181, ASM 300 9.8, Mark Jeweler 9.8's, etc) are probably mostly aware of it. It won't chase everyone out of the pool, but it will make some areas suspect for a while.

I expect to see maybe 15%-20% impact on certain books in the near-term. The usual suspects, Hulk 181, ASM 300, etc. I suspect that many of those books are bought at auction based on expectations of higher future value, rather than buy-and-keep collectors. This could certainly put some hesitation into those expectations.

Yeah, it doesn't necessarily incriminate the owners, but it certainly taints the books. Although it does indicate who the owners might have been getting their inventory from. I quit buying from a local convention dealer years ago when I realized that he had become a target for scammers looking to sell restored raw books. I liked him, just had concerns about where he was getting his inventory from. Time for new pics!