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eBay Finally Cracks Down on Crooks, Forgers and Frauds

About 2 years ago eBay asked me to participate in a new program called Enhanced Member Reporting (EMR) for the Autograph and Entertainment categories. It was the first time in my 12 years on eBay that eBay began to take noticeable action against the proliferation of scam operations. In particular, the massive number of online autograph forgers. I recall one forger who sold an estimated 200,000-300,000 forgeries operated unscathed for about 4-5 years on eBay before they finally, after an onslaught of complaints, removed this individual from eBay. But, not before he made millions$$ and even worse flooded the autograph industry with these forgeries.

The outrageous part of this was that he was a very low level, unskilled forger. Every week he would post about 2000 forgeries on the same blue paper, and the same style forgeries of Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart and the list goes on. Of course he sold these for a tiny fraction of their value , but he didn’t care because he had no overhead except for a lot of blue paper and blue flair pens. . I know of several people that were reporting him to eBay back in the days when eBay just “looked the other way”. It was painful to see so many people/victims getting ripped off. Sure, we all hear, buyer beware and “anyone ignorant enough to buy a ridiculous fake deserves what he gets”. But, not all these inexperienced eBay buyers deserved being victimized by these eBay “crooks”. A friend of mine just wanted a special gift for his very sick son who was a big Elvis fan. He was an inexperienced eBay user and assumed everything being sold, with a COA was legitimate. It was also painful for me to have to give him the bad news about the forgery he had bought.

Meanwhile, about 5-6 years ago someone referred me to Rob Chestnut who was the VP of eBay Safe Harbor at the time. Rob was the first person I met at eBay who actually cared about this issue of blatant fraud. It was uplifting to see action finally being executed against some of the most notorious eBay autograph forgery operations. I even suspect Rob may have butted heads with executive management over this issue, because soon after the “cleanup” began, Rob was gone. And, I soon noticed my forgery reports were “falling on deaf ears” AGAIN and forgery operations began to gain new life.

The EMR program is not perfect (I still watch a forger of cartoonist art like Charles Schulz continuing to operate on a regular basis for the past 10 years). But it has been a step in the right direction. And, I will go out on a limb and say I am proud of eBay management, even if much too late, to finally be taking an active stand in circumventing many of the fraudulent operations on eBay. Even if it only amounts to a fraction of the illegal activity. Below is part of the email I received today. Note, the second most active category, Sports & Entertainment Memorabilia. I am sure you can guess what makes up about 99% of the reports for that category?

“We would like to thank your participation in the Enhanced Member Reporting (EMR) program. For 2 years now, this program has been very important in reducing items that should not be listed on eBay and has improved safety for the eBay community.

EMR Statistics

· In March, we took action on 75% of the reports submitted by members of the Enhanced Member Reporting community.

· Top Reported Categories:

o Clothing, Shoes, & Accessories

o Sports & Entertainment Memorabilia

o Jewelry, Gems, & Watches”

Meanwhile., take a look at a report I wrote about this subject a couple years ago and share with anyone you think could benefit from tips on How to Avoid Getting Ripped Off on eBay or other online sources. . .

http://www.cvtreasures.com/safe-buying-online-guide-page-2

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 21, 2011 at 5:08am

Great to hear that we are not the only ones... I believe the title of this thread is a vast overstatement unfortunately.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 21, 2011 at 6:57am

You are welcome to set up a place to reveal fraudsters and forgeries here. As for eBay, I'll make introductions. Please friend me on Facebook if you haven't.

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Permalink Reply by Rich on March 25, 2011 at 9:41am

I was pretty surprised that an item I reported was taken off ebay within a couple hours. I am used to Ebay simply ignoring my complaints. In about 3 sentences, I explained why an Aaron Rodgers Super Bowl signed pic was fake, thinking there was no way any action would be taken. Then the auction went poof! While I'm certain that I'm not the only one who said anything (I'm sure the hoard of dealers who participated in the Rodgers Feb 27 and Mar 13 private signings shared their opinions as well), it's nice to see ebay take SOME action.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 25, 2011 at 10:01am

You'll see eBay acting more like they did in 1999, when they were vigilant against fakes. The person who was handling sports and entertainment fraud changed departments a year and a half ago--but came back recently.

Among the first things he did was ban Christopher Morales, Nick Burzyk and TTA (Ted Turner Authentic) COAs. And they're removing fakes quickly...but carefully.

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 25, 2011 at 10:36am

where do you get to put in a description. from the report window it's merely selecting pre-defined box but no added text.

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Permalink Reply by Rich on March 25, 2011 at 11:15am

Good question - I'd have to go through the process again. I'm not even sure what field I selected . . . All I remember is that there was very little space to write, so youi have to make your reasoning very, very concise.

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 25, 2011 at 11:18am

doesn't surprise me on the limited wording which is a problem in and of itself. The selections are also made extremely difficult to simply report the suspected item as being "non-authentic" Of course, thats a two edge sword.

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Permalink Reply by Rich on March 27, 2011 at 4:46pm

Same seller at it again, also selling fake Clay Matthews, Tom Brady (nice try) and Favre items. And several more Rodgers items. I reported all of them.

Hell of the thing is that Rodgers has a pretty simple signature. If you can't hack forging that, it's time to quit trying.

I gotta wonder if the people buying his stuff are really content that they just bought an authentic example? I guess ignorance is bliss.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on April 1, 2011 at 7:13am

I recently reported an item that had a Burczyk COA. Item was not pulled.

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Permalink Reply by Rich on April 1, 2011 at 7:20am

Same bogus seller continues to put Aaron Rodgers, Clay Matthews, Albert Pujols, Favre, etc up - whatever. Ebay really doesn't care at the end of the day.