skybolt

It would be really interesting to see when this guy started the whole re-holdering scam. I doubt this went back to 2011 or even 2016. Thus far the best evidence we've gotten was from 2022. My gut tells me it started back in 2021 when this guy started noticing how much money could be made between direct/newsstand copies, etc. I'm also confident that 9.9newsstand or other smart collectors would've caught onto something this egregious if it was going on for 10 years.

On 12/23/2023 at 6:11 AM, Sigur Ros said:

Agreed.  I wasn't arguing against your comment.  I'm just thinking of the 2 responses, which one is better for them.

"We fired the guy who was doing this between the years of 20XX and 20XX"

Or...

"we're really bad at this AND have no idea how long we've been failing."

Both options are bad. One means that their entire product has been compromised, while the second one could lead to any book that was graded / reholdered by CGC to come into question since this guy was hired. What I mean is what if he got greedy and started telling friends and family to submit books and he'd fix things on his end. There's no telling what the extent was and how it could be tracked.

On 12/23/2023 at 6:06 AM, Sigur Ros said:

Wasn't posted in this thread so likely missed.

The guy was getting a refund, whether by the seller or PayPal.  That was assumed.  Good thing buyer stepped up though.

The real problem worthy of discussion is CGC's enabling of this fraud.

 

The seller is likely trying to play nice with eBay until the rest of his funds are released. Once that happens he'll change bank accounts and leave eBay. He will lose some frozen funds though.

I keep thinking about what 9.9newsstand said about the guy bragging that his CGC guy lets him know how many newsstand or Mark Jewelers (l can't remember) have been graded for certain issues. I wonder if this info is easy to access for all CGC employees (since the designations were put on the labels). Can they just type up Hulk 181 and all the submissions for this issue and notes pop up?

On 12/23/2023 at 3:24 AM, agamoto said:

The FF12 is a funny one. He sells it to himself in march for $9500, submits it to CGC and gets a new holder and sells it again in May for half the price.

 

Great work! Thanks for posting all the pics and info.

It appears to me that this guy was always shady, but not as sophisticated with his scams as he is today. He was more into shill bidding and things of that nature. For example, he would've definitely tried to exchange that PLOD with blue label if he could.

When did he start selling the Hulk 181's? That would give us an idea when the major operation started.

On 12/22/2023 at 8:20 PM, Prince Namor said:

You wouldn't have to. The machine wouldn't be doing that. An employee does the handling.

I get why certain sellers would be against it. They have a buddy or two working for CGC who can game the system for them. The idea of blocking that is frightening to them. They could no longer claim to be as expert of a grader, because now they wouldn't know ahead of time what the grade was going to be. 

In the old days, the scam was to tell someone, "Hey these books are only a 2.0!", when the dealer KNOWS they're better than that, so they could take those books to a buyer of theirs and say, "Hey these books are a 5.0!" and make a huge profit immediately.

Now... you find the right guy working the right job, you take care of him, he can take care of you.

You can see why they'd be afraid of AI, it would take the gaming right out of the system.

I'm just worried about an AI scanning a dust particle that landed on the book and thinking it's a stain.

On 12/22/2023 at 8:07 PM, VintageComics said:

How do you know it's an MJ insert and not someone's nudie pics that they hid in there?

It's because of blind trust (again assuming it wasn't an inside job). The person reholdering the book probably thought A.) there's no way someone could open the case and tamper with the book. B.) the original grader (s) would've noticed the nudie pics when they first graded the book, and C.) It was likely someone dropping the ball and forgetting to put the Mark Jeweler designation on the label. I would understand all of the above if we were talking about  $100 book. However, for something worth 5 figures, CGC policy has to be that if the Mark Jeweler designation was missed, then the inner well must be opened no matter what.

On 12/22/2023 at 8:03 PM, VintageComics said:

So you're going to put your ASM #1, Hulk #181 or Action #1 into that machine and let it flip pages?

How do you get the book out of a Mylar?

How do you get the book into the machine?

How do you get it off the machine?

How do you get it to encapsulation? 

I don't think some people think anything they're saying through.

Or maybe they just can't. 

This conversation is ridiculous. 

I'd rather have my 5-year old daughter handle my expensive books than a machine.

Obviously we're working with circumstantial evidence at this point, but if it does turn out the seller had help on the inside, it really simplifies a lot for him. That means he wasn't recreating slabs, he didn't have a Doctor Who level sonic screwdriver to open and weld slabs shut, he didn't need to know how to marry inserts or buy additional lower graded books to get the inserts needed to marry with the qualified books. All he needed to be was a regular Joe like us (buying and selling books), while someone else manipulated the grading info before slabbing. My gut tells me that all of the qualified Hulk #181's that were graded into a blue label still have missing stamps and pages on the inside.

It's interesting that the bad market forced this guy to get sloppy and start messing around with more rare Mark Jeweler books, which got him caught. When he was raking in big bucks selling newsstands for triple what they're selling for today, he was content with sticking with what works and is mostly undetected.

On a side note, if CGC is forced to pay back customers for fraudulent books, would they pay the current FMV or what the buyer paid when the market was hot? I'm assuming the former.

On 12/22/2023 at 12:53 PM, comicwiz said:

Now look at the graded date on the blue 7.5:

Wow, that's some great detective work. I'm so confused as to how this would happen? Inside job?

At minimum, CGC should come out with a new policy/service where they would continue the re-holdering process for any books valued at $400 or less. Then a new service called re-exam/re-holder would come into play for books valued over $400. This new service would require CGC staff to remove the book from the inner well, exam it carefully vs. other scans on file and for married/missing pieces and regrade if necessary. The submitter would be responsible for the extra charge if this is not their submission that came back with a cracked case or missing designation (within a 2 week period).   

On 12/22/2023 at 12:16 PM, grendel013 said:

I started to read through this thread but it got very long very quickly. Instead of trying to slip and already lower grade inner well into a carefully opened higher grade outer well, is it possible the fraudster just has access to brand new CGC outer wells and the sonic welder thingy? Maybe I'm not knowledgeable enough about the encapsulation process but if I had a case of new outer wells (which I've seen available in comic shops) and the right tool to seal, couldn't I be swapping books all day?

You mean like send a couple of CGC slabs to a factory in China to see if they can replicate it in bulk?

On 12/22/2023 at 11:08 AM, paqart said:

My potentially totally wrong guess:

1. The bad guy is scamming comics, cards, and coins
2. The bad guy owns equipment needed to seal slabs of various sizes, at the least
3. The bad guy is doing this fraud as a business. Meaning, it isn't a side scam. It's all he does.
4. His minimal annual investment is $100k. Meaning, that is his cost of doing "business."
5. To be profitable, he has to churn $200k in sales every year.
6. The comics we've seen so far are in the $5k-$15k value range. Average to $10k each. He's doing 20+ comics a year
7. He does not sell the raw 9.8's he needs to get slabs, or not often. This is a fixed cost that is not recouped, but rolled over for more fraud.
8. The bad guy has a stable of targeted issues he deals in, and not much else
9. The bad guy cannot afford to have his cash flow compromised by slow TATS. Therefore, he has multiple 9.8's of the same issues in his stable, so that he has multiple submissions in the queue at all times.
10. The bad guy has designed his scam so that he receive new fraudulently encapsulated comics every 30-60 days. If not, he goes broke.

That's a good list. With respect to No's 4 and 5, my gut tells me those numbers are a lot higher. For example, in addition to Ebay, this guy was also selling stuff on other forums. 99newsstand also mentioned that he's seen him at sales shows showcasing his stuff during the comic book boom. I imagine he was getting triple the price at that time. This guy probably also sold books to a lot of dealers without that info making it into Go Collect or GPA. I'm really scared that his submissions could be somewhere in the 5k to 10k range over the past 12 years, which will likely lead to your other point that multiple people are involved in the process.

On 12/22/2023 at 11:31 AM, namisgr said:

Fact finding wasn't an emphasis for CGC back in the day when they gave a high grade comic I'd bought off the rack a purple/trimmed label.  I'd be surprised if it's become one since then.  Instead, I strongly suspect their lack of response is due to the holiday season, and a number of higher ups being already on vacation.

I completely get that, and the last thing I want is for CGC to say something now and then backtrack when more info comes out. With that being said, even if the higher ups are on vacation, they could text an employee and ask them to post on this forum that CGC is getting to the bottom of this, but will need more time to gather all the facts.

On 12/22/2023 at 10:47 AM, mephistopheles said:

I am skeptical that anyone at CGC is knowingly involved. I think his story that he calls in favors from CGC is just deflection from his scamming. And we don't know that he hasn't made mistakes.

I asked earlier if anyone submitted reslab that got regraded lower. No response. So I am 95% sure they are not thoroughly examining re-holders.

It's not so much the employee is knowingly involved, but if he is going against CGC policy by allowing a Mark Jeweler designation to be added as part of the re-holdering process (because he trusts this guy), then he becomes complicit in this scam.

On 12/22/2023 at 11:09 AM, sledgehammer said:

The fraudulent seller was explaining to 9.9 (from the youtube video expose), why he sent the book back to CGC for the MJ insert (which was probably BS).

Anything said by him is virtually useless, as he couldn't justify his fraud in any way.

Thank you. My bad, I read it as 99newsstand was a known fraudster. Now I get it. 

On 12/22/2023 at 10:43 AM, LDarkseid1 said:

You always trust the word of a known fraudster? I take anything that guy says with the tiniest grain of salt until proof is shown.

Please explain.

Thinking about all the logistics involved with this scam, I find it hard to believe that the seller is the only person involved in this scheme. Yes, this person is likely coordinating this stuff with CGC and selling the slabs, but I bet he has a couple of guys in the back room doing all the grunt work. There's no way this person could do all this at once without making mistakes earlier.

Sorry to keep harking on this. Going back to what 9.9newsstand mentioned a few days ago, the seller had previously told him that he had connections at CGC, and that he calls in favors from someone higher up. Again, I'm not saying this CGC employee was getting kick back or was in on the scam. However, having someone in that position does help this seller launder some books. For example, if A.) the higher up CGC employee has had a good relationship with this guy for many years (again, nothing nefarious), and B.) believes there's zero chance someone can open a CGC case without detection, they could've potentially believed this guy was on the up and up with his constant complaints. All he had to do was call the CGC employee and say your guys screwed up again with my submission and forgot to give me a Mark Jeweler or Newsstand designation. If the CGC employee trusted this guy and wanted to make sure they didn't lose a valuable customer, they would A.) likely not check if he was the original submitter of this book and B.) tell a much lower level employee to fix this situation promptly and add the designations via reholdering.

This relationship would also come into play with previously green labeled books being sent into grading with a married insert. If an experienced CGC grader was able to detect it, especially on multiple books, the higher up employee would ease their minds and say don't worry about it. This guy is a long time submitter and sometimes he buys books missing pieces unknowingly. This preferential treatment would ultimately not raise suspicion company wide. If the seller got the blue label designation on these books, then he would sell them. If he got a green label, then he likely tried to grade the book again or just use it for switcheroo purposes.

On 12/22/2023 at 10:07 AM, Gonzimodo said:

Yeah, basically.  I don't know how he's opening and resealing cases or whatever, but he would need an individual 9.8 certification number and case for each of his little manufactured fakes.

Buy the 9.8.  Crack it open, add a lower-grade newsstand/MJ/CPV/whatever and send that comic in the 9.8 case back to CGC to correct their "error."

Resubmit (as a "raw") the original 9.8 book that he cracked out and receive a brand new certification number and case.

Crack it open, add a lower-grade newsstand/MJ/CPV/whatever and send that comic in the 9.8 case back to CGC to correct their "error."

Resubmit (as a "raw") the original 9.8 book that he cracked out and receive a brand new certification number and case.

Repeat as necessary.  The same, original 9.8 copy could generate as many 9.8 certification numbers and cases as he needs.

Yup, that makes a lot of sense and would explain the same book being resubmitted 10 times.

On 12/22/2023 at 9:34 AM, Gonzimodo said:

I've always assumed the fugly 9.6s and 9.8s I've seen over the last couple of years were just the result of lazy or loose grading by CGC, but now I wonder how many are the result of a scam like this.

It's also been pointed out that this guy can double-dip by resubmitting the original 9.8 book for grading and then reselling it, but why stop there?  If you think about it, submitting the book again just gives him another 9.8 registry number to swap out the book and resubmit for a custom label or "clerical error" with a missing MJ or CPV designation or whatever to manufacture another fake.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Theoretically, all it takes is one solid 9.8 copy to generate as many 9.8 registry entries as he needs, at least until too much handling results in it no longer receiving a 9.8 grade.

Obviously, I can't verify that this is happening, but it seems possible. 

You bring up a good point. So trying to unpack what you stated above, does this mean that this guy was actually able to open the whole case and then reweld it? What I mean is that like you said above, he buys 1 9.8 copy of let's say UXM #266 direct edition. He then buys 5 9.4 UXM 266 CGC newsstands. He would then take the whole book apart, insert the 9.4 inner well and replace the label. However, before he does any of this, he sends the same 9.8 direct edition to CGC 5 times (without the label included) to receive 5 separate 9.8 labels. Once these 5 labels and the 9.4 newsstands are inserted into the cracked open cases, he welds all 5 CGC cases. He then send all 5 at different times to CGC for reholdering to get the newsstand 9.8 designation. He then sends the 1 9.8 direct edition to CGC to be graded. 

On 12/22/2023 at 7:04 AM, GDN said:

I don't know if this was brought up but after watching Automatic Comic's video about the Hulk 181 with pg 10 missing, it is clear that in that example it wasn't a reholder scam like the others.  When Ryan shows the other 7 books in his CGC submission for the blue label 181 the grading date matches the other 7 books in that submission.  If this was a reholder the grading date on the reholder would have been an older date just like we saw in the ASM252, NM98 and Hulk181MVS examples.  So this guy is also marrying books.

Yes. I believe Automatic Comics mentioned the same thing in his newer video. Honestly, I think a lot of this problem stems from CGC moving away from 3 people grading each book. If someone is inexperienced or having an off day, they could easily miss something like this. With that being said, I'm really hoping that at some point someone finds examples of this person not getting his way at CGC. Even Ewert was not batting 100% with his trimmed books when CGC graded them. Honestly, I don't know how this evidence can be found. I'm sure CGC has the records needed to show they caught some of his shenanigans along the way or refused to re-holder his Mark Jewelers because the standard practice was to regrade them. If this guy got his way every single time (I don't care how good he is), then something is definitely fishy.

On 12/21/2023 at 11:14 PM, drotto said:

I speculate it is not someone within CGC, but is a person very well known to them, and they have a long standing relationship. So there is a level of trust, and things are expediated for them. They know how CGC works, and the know where the weak spots are. I think it is likely this individual has 100's if not 1000's of submissions over the years. 

The problem is that if the CGC employee is going against CGC policy to please this person, then they are complicit in this scam as well. What I mean is that if CGC policy is to regrade the book to verify the Mark Jeweler insert (even if they missed the designation the first time), then they can't give this guy a pass because they know him. This is how they got in trouble with Ewert. It's like me telling CGC that they should change the grade on my book to a 9.6 or 9.8 because the grader notes they provided make no sense. At minimum, CGC will say we'll regrade the book at our expense to verify. They will not say, "oh, you're right, the grader notes say there's a large fingerprint on the front cover, and because it isn't there, then you get the grade you want".