CGC Files Lawsuit Against Employees 30 30

[COI]

Billion dollar companies don't care about me?

[Lightning55]

On 2/3/2024 at 3:43 PM, batman_fan said:

Yeah I would think when the 1st book went missing you would be concerned about its where abouts

Did these books actually go missing, or were lesser copies substituted? 

I could see a scenario where the employee sees a key comic receiving a high grade, like a 9.8. He has a 9.2 copy at home, raw or slabbed, purchased ahead, waiting for the 9.8 match. Smuggles his in, makes the swap before encapsulation, smuggles the 9.8 out.

If this could be done, there is no red flag along the way, no triggering of suspicion, no accounting deficiency, no lost book. Only a camera, another employee, a security person, or a manager could catch it.

If the submitter claims the book he got back is not the one he submitted, CGC could say it must have been damaged on the way in, not their responsibility. 

[Galen130]

On 2/3/2024 at 2:07 PM, COI said:

Billion dollar companies don't care about me?

There, there…it’ll be okay. 

[The Lions Den]

On 2/1/2024 at 7:11 PM, Christophe9999 said:

That's surprising to me. There's a significant color breaking tic and not sure what you call that long line. Plus the wear on the upper right top corner I feel like these combined and still getting a 9.6 questionable.

Thanks for providing the large scan---that's very helpful. That top corner does look a little rough, and that color loss near the spine is concerning...    

 

[jimjum12]

On 2/3/2024 at 12:32 PM, Stefan_W said:

I completely get the frustration, and mistakes that impact upon members that warrant criticism were definitely made. However, I wouldn't go so far as to lump every decision-maker at CGC into one pot and saying they don't care about us or comic collecting in general. I take it as a given that people who have moved up the ranks within CGC care a great deal about comic collectors and love our hobby - that is why they are doing this as a career. Mistakes were absolutely made along the way, but I think those mistakes are more likely to be the result of other pressures than a lack of caring about us or the hobby (e.g., making sure the budget is in line with corporate expectations, trying to hire enough people in the middle of a pandemic to meet the insatiable demand for grading books at the time, etc). 

Here is my two cents. My place of work has hundreds of employees, and trust me I would not be surprised to find a crappy person in that mix of personalities. Having bad apples slip through into a large business is simply not a surprise. Normal business processes like growing in size quickly and switching to new facilities make things even more challenging and lead to further risk. The thing that needs to be improved, IMO, are safeguards to prevent employees from potentially stealing or tampering with products under their care (i.e., solidify a chain of custody so every person who touches a book is tracked) and safeguards to ensure employees are not handling anything that is not directly under their purview (e.g., only certain people get to touch labels, anyone outside of that group simply does not have access to them). External audits can be contracted out to ensure a safe chain of custody and to identify possible cracks in existing processes that may not have been considered. If I put on the "if I was running the company" hat this is where I would be spending some extra money. 

Quite often, when a smaller company is absorbed by a larger one, or a division that was largely "self directed" comes under the Corporate umbrella, what one will often see are cute corporate buzz words like "cross training", "multi tasking", "uncluttering the value stream". In regular english, that means you will be doing twice the work with twice the re-training with less breaks and a saturation of management watching you work. The cross-training, means that the guy who is a whiz at QA tasks will be doing brain surgery a few times a month, The gynecologist will be doing the brain surgery, and the scheduler will be mopping the floors. All in the name of increased proficiency. LOTS of growing pains. As for security, this will not be info available to the workforce or public at large. Certainly not in a press release. Anything leaking out that way is often a red herring. Finger pointing and root cause analysis is probably premature at this point, and will unlikely be a result of customer consensus. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[EastEnd1]

On 2/3/2024 at 4:09 PM, Lightning55 said:

Did these books actually go missing, or were lesser copies substituted? 

I could see a scenario where the employee sees a key comic receiving a high grade, like a 9.8. He has a 9.2 copy at home, raw or slabbed, purchased ahead, waiting for the 9.8 match. Smuggles his in, makes the swap before encapsulation, smuggles the 9.8 out.

If this could be done, there is no red flag along the way, no triggering of suspicion, no accounting deficiency, no lost book. Only a camera, another employee, a security person, or a manager could catch it.

If the submitter claims the book he got back is not the one he submitted, CGC could say it must have been damaged on the way in, not their responsibility. 

 

The court filing says he stole 23 submitted comics... 

 

Edited February 3 by EastEnd1

[Galen130]

On 2/3/2024 at 2:25 PM, jimjum12 said:

Quite often, when a smaller company is absorbed by a larger one, or a division that was largely "self directed" comes under the Corporate umbrella, what one will often see are cute corporate buzz words like "cross training", "multi tasking", "uncluttering the value stream". In regular english, that means you will be doing twice the work with twice the re-training with less breaks and a saturation of management watching you work. The cross-training, means that the guy who is a whiz at QA tasks will be doing brain surgery a few times a month, The gynecologist will be doing the brain surgery, and the scheduler will be mopping the floors. All in the name of increased proficiency. LOTS of growing pains. As for security, this will not be info available to the workforce or public at large. Certainly not in a press release. Anything leaking out that way is often a red herring. Finger pointing and root cause analysis is probably premature at this point, and will unlikely be a result of customer consensus. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Jimbo!!!  Good to see you back!!! 

[The Lions Den]

On 2/3/2024 at 4:25 PM, jimjum12 said:

Quite often, when a smaller company is absorbed by a larger one, or a division that was largely "self directed" comes under the Corporate umbrella, what one will often see are cute corporate buzz words like "cross training", "multi tasking", "uncluttering the value stream". In regular english, that means you will be doing twice the work with twice the re-training with less breaks and a saturation of management watching you work. The cross-training, means that the guy who is a whiz at QA tasks will be doing brain surgery a few times a month, The gynecologist will be doing the brain surgery, and the scheduler will be mopping the floors. All in the name of increased proficiency. LOTS of growing pains. As for security, this will not be info available to the workforce or public at large. Certainly not in a press release. Anything leaking out that way is often a red herring. Finger pointing and root cause analysis is probably premature at this point, and will unlikely be a result of customer consensus. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Nice to see you back, Jimbo! 

johnny (a friend of jimbo)  

[COI]

CGC has become so big and so rich off of collectors pressing and resubbing books dozens of times, or sending cases of brand new books straight from the printers, that they've forgotten what's important: the collectors. We, the collectors, who press, resub and prescreen (9.9 baby!) out of love.

I'm not sure how a business predicated on enriching its clients by facilitating the unregulated, high value trade of commodified non-essential goods through a mostly arbitrary and subjective process, has so thoroughly lost its way? 

Come back to the light, CGC. My retirement depends on it.

[jimjum12]

On 2/3/2024 at 4:29 PM, Galen130 said:

Jimbo!!!  Good to see you back!!! 

Not really back, but I am walking on my own, but like "The Mummy Lives". I attempted making my super secret Fajita dinner and thought I was going to die towards the end. A 2 hour deal that took almost 5. I'm definitely not ready to moonlight on a food truck. It took all day to pack up 8 parcels last week. I'm very slow and jerky. dropping stuff a lot. Yo, hand me that Baby, ...NOT. Thankful to be alive, though. GOD BLESS ... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

 

 

Edited February 4 by jimjum12

[mrwoogieman]

On 2/3/2024 at 3:57 PM, ttfitz said:

Fair enough. I just thought I'd give you the benefit of the doubt and that you weren't acting like a jerk for no reason.

You could be and are wrong.

 

 

[mosconi]

I'm going to salute CGC for prosecuting these two scumbags.  They could have kept it out of the public eye and never brought forth any charges.  Most companies would have never let this out.  That's the first step which I commend them.  But the next and biggest step is reevaluating and addressing all of the weaknesses in their security model and methods.  Whatever security system they are implementing at their facility is not working.  

How do we know there are not more graders and receivers doing the same fraudulent activities but haven't been caught yet. 

They need to communicate to the public in a clear message what steps they are taking to solve these security shortcomings to avoid future scams          

[Gaard]

On 2/3/2024 at 5:21 PM, mosconi said:

I'm going to salute CGC for prosecuting these two scumbags.  They could have kept it out of the public eye and never brought forth any charges.  Most companies would have never let this out.   

Why do you think CGC is doing this then?

[mosconi]

On 2/3/2024 at 2:24 PM, Gaard said:

Why do you think CGC is doing this then?

That's a good question.  Why would they want to let out this further embarrassment and have a whole new thread on their ineffective/incompetent security system?  There may be more details to come forth 

[bc]

On 2/3/2024 at 5:24 PM, Gaard said:

Why do you think CGC is doing this then?

To keep the people with the pitchforks fighting against the people with the torches while nothing really changes.

-bc

[The Lions Den]

On 2/3/2024 at 5:21 PM, mosconi said:

I'm going to salute CGC for prosecuting these two scumbags.  They could have kept it out of the public eye and never brought forth any charges.  Most companies would have never let this out.  That's the first step which I commend them.  But the next and biggest step is reevaluating and addressing all of the weaknesses in their security model and methods.  Whatever security system they are implementing at their facility is not working.  

How do we know there are not more graders and receivers doing the same fraudulent activities but haven't been caught yet. 

They need to communicate to the public in a clear message what steps they are taking to solve these security shortcomings to avoid future scams          

I'm sure they'll be taking additional security measures to prevent something like this from happening again...  

[Dr. Balls]

On 2/3/2024 at 3:21 PM, mosconi said:

I'm going to salute CGC for prosecuting these two scumbags.  They could have kept it out of the public eye and never brought forth any charges.  Most companies would have never let this out. 

 

On 2/3/2024 at 3:24 PM, Gaard said:

Why do you think CGC is doing this then?

Aside from "making the bad guy pay for his crimes":

They could be establishing a public track record of examples to show higher ups that there are losses at work that are affecting the bottom line, in order to cover up some internal problems that are really causing issues.

It's pure speculation, but they wouldn't be the first company to showcase illegal activity that affects their profits in order to masquerade bigger internal issues like poor hiring practices during explosive expansion and not being able to keep up with employee standards. That's no excuse, mind you - if you can scale your company properly, you shouldn't be scaling.

I don't know when these dirtbag graders were hired, that would shed some light on why they might not have been vetted properly. CGC isn't the first company to hire bodies simply to keep the machine going, regardless of skills or abilities.

[MasterChief]

On 2/3/2024 at 11:36 AM, COI said:

I'm not sure how a business predicated on enriching its clients by facilitating the unregulated, high value trade of commodified non-essential goods through a mostly arbitrary and subjective process, has so thoroughly lost its way?

Sounds like someone’s moral compass wasn’t wound tight enough.

[mikenyc]

Once private equity money enters the equation the notion of comic book collectors at heart vanguarding your collectibles like they were their own, goes out the window. Replace comics with Twinkies or cars or software or any other product, they’re all interchangeable. The motivation becomes cost cutting and efficiency to streamline and increase profits. Quality control, personnel, infrastructure, everything becomes secondary to profit margins. 

The number of these type of failures will increase as the individuals who may have started out with good intentions are forced to fall on their swords and are replaced with other individuals who focus solely on the profit motive to the detriment of end consumers. 
 

Buy the book and not the grade and you’ll be fine. Unless the books are high dollar and then you’re probably f ed. 

Edited February 4 by mikenyc
I spell like a 2 year old

[mikenyc]

Also to not be a complete hypocrite, even with all the drama going on I plan to continuing purchasing CGC books, as even with problems, believe them to be the best option available.