Formed with the stated goal of stamping out fake autographs, AFTAL, the Autograph Fair Trade Alliance, attracted many of UK's and Europe's most reputable dealers as members. But while the vast majority of AFTAL dealers lived its stated goal, including a recognized expert used by law enforcement to testify against the forgery industry, AFTAL's two primary founders, Dominic Manning and Marc Mclennan, used it as cover to sell and authenticate thousands of forgeries. Manning has seized control of the organization after an AFTAL steering committee found that he sold hundreds of fake Michael Jackson autographs he claimed to have gotten in person. And like a mansion built on quicksand, AFTAL is crumbling.
As the legally listed head of AFTAL, Manning, owner of Behind the Scenes Autographs, disbanded the steering committee last week that was formed in December by boardmember Garry King after Manning and another boardmember were forced to resign. Manning then reportedly had AFTAL's lawyer slap a suppression order (gag order) on the former members of the committee, forbidding them to talk publicly about Manning's actions or their determination that the Michael Jacksons Manning sold were forgeries.
In the UK, even revealing that you are under a suppression order can have you held in contempt of court, so little information about it has come out and no public documents appear to be available. But the sudden silence of former steering members who used to speak to me confirms its existence in my mind.
Events have taken a violent turn. Several autograph dealers have reportedly been threatened by Manning or the source of the forgeries, Adrian Longden, and police reports have been filed. At least one victim is in fear of his life.
Roughly a third of AFTAL members have resigned or are in the process of doing so, and many more are anticipated to resign as they hear about the scandal.
Stay tuned for more. Autograph Magazine is preparing a list of current and former AFTAL dealers considered reputable. Please message me if you would like to be considered for this list.
For more details on AFTAL's actions and the Dominic Manning/Adrian Longden forgeries, read the following Autograph Magazine Live! discussions:
Let me just make a few things clear again. I have never purchased anything from Adrian, and please do not keep making these suggestions that my stock keeps being called into question, or that 'a great many of your items are not good' as this is simply incorrect and grossly misleading and would easily be considered a possible legal action here in the UK. I think out of over 2000 listed at the time, about ten items were suggested as being possible Adrian forgeries. That is a very samll % by anyones calculations.
Again, i have never purchased a single item from Adrian, don't know him, never met him, and have only spoken to him once when he called me to try and convince me he was as honest as the day is long.
I have purchased some items from Dominic in the past, but it was a very small percentage of my inventory, and any items that came from Dominic when all this started where immmediatly withdrawn from sale and remain here awaiting a refund from Dominic.
I recall a Charlton Heston secretarial that should never have been on there at all, as this should have been removed when we all heard the truth about those, and a Kylie, which was simply a poor Kylie, and a Clint Eastwood, neither of which came from Dominic.
It is 100% certain that there was a threat against another dealer, no doubt about that whatsoever. As for being a dealer and offering an authentication service, is that not what Roger Epperson does now and has done for a long time? i do understand why some might see this as some kind of conflict of interest but i do not. Most of what i do in that area is in fact yes/no opinions on items on ebay, which can surely only be a good thing, and i do not authenticate everything for anybody. If i find that i cannot give an answer that i could prove to be correct 'beyond reasonable doubt' then i do not do it.
I offered a basic autograph course as a way of ensuring that any dealer or collector could learn how to spot the basic signs of forgery, autopens, printed signatures etc, it was not an authentication course, but part one of a course that was leading to them being able to learn about the correct way to authenticate a signature, and i am sure that one of the 70 plus people will confirm that. The course came about simply because we wanted our dealers to become better dealers, and by helping them to help themselves, they in turn could educate their own customers. It has proved to be a very usefull course, and the fact that over 70 plus people have taken it must say something.
These comments that some make about AFTAL in general are doing a great deal of harm to this entire business, and as i have also said before, the only people who will benefit from wrecking AFTAL or indeed any similar organisation (who is next?) are the forgers and other low life who abound within this business. I have spent far too much of my time in the UK helping to close some of these people down, and as a result made a few enemies. Now as a result of much of this crap that has been written on here, i am both unwilling and unable to do any more similar work, so the criminla wins again.
There is nothing going on between Steve and myslef, no collusion, no back handers, no nothing, we just both keep in touch and swap stories on forgers, and again for the record, i have never purchased anything from Steve or his company.
I feel like such a buzzkill with some of my questions, but I'm just curious: Does Marc and/or Dominic actually own the AFTAL organization? I've never really understood AFTAL's structure, and noticed that there were some references to stock holders.
"He should be trying to take in all expert advice into a coherant, helpful website. Which I believe that it is" I agree totally with that statement, but then you say "You do have the choice to not read what anyone says" that is as maybe, but when people like yourselfr make statements that are untrue or simply twisted away from the truth, you are making a statement of fact that can be seen by anyone at any time, This is not simply a conversation between you and me, but you telling the whole world incorrect assumptions and guesses that are often simply nothing less than plain and simple lies, but can and will be seen by others as fact, and therfore can affect min eor other dealers business.
Lest look at how many known dealers actually post on here? i can only count myslef and the other AFTAL dealers that have had fingers pointed at as either part of a forgery ring or similar! I speak with UK and US dealers every day of the week, and evrry one of them says the same things. "i might read it, but i certainly would never post on it" and why? because they know that sooner or later some smart ass will come on and post some comment about a suspect item, and then wait for a few others to jump in and destroy them.
This kind of thing happens on almost every forum, and that is why most sensible people avoid them.
Shawn, no, much of what you say does not make sense, so i am not going to even try.
"you have to also put yourself ABOVE reproach" Take a good look in the mirror mate, ever made a mistake, oh, you havn't, well done you. Every single dealer you know will have made a mistake at some point, so don't go on fooling yourself that the ones you might buy from are perfect, because they are not. That may annoy some, but if they are honest, they will say, yes, i have made some mistakes, after all we are all human.
When this started i said that dealers have to build a trust with one another, without that trust, we cannot do any business. That is why you buy from dealers you trust, but do you? Ask yourself how mnay times you have bought something and then asked someone else for an opinion about it? Who do you then believe. My view is that every collector, and i assuming that you are a collector, should learn to be able to spot all the usual stuff, the printed, the facsimile etc, but how many actaully try and learn about autographs and how to authenticate? i tell you, very few indeed.
I bought those Jackson items from Dominic because i trusted him, excatly the same reason why every other dealer did, and every collector as well. Yes, if i had spent a couple of hours on them authenticating them and picking up the 14 or so reference points that i have now done, then no i would not have bought them.
I am unable to tell you exactly how many items i purchased from Dominic Manning, but i can tell you that almost all of them are sitting here in a seperate folder marked return to Dom!
Rich. As far as i am aware, there are three Directors of AFTAL and if you want to know the full details, you can simply go to Companies house here in the UK (its all online) and you can check these deatils out for yourself. And once again, i have not nor ever been an owner, director or share holder of AFTAL. I was a board member with at varying times up to 8 other AFTAL dealers.
I don't think Steve always defends me at all, in fact if he did, and we had something going on, why on earth would he allow so many people to publish so much crap about me?
Gary, thanks. It suddenly occurred to me that I really never understood anything of how organizations like UACC or AFTAL were structured and run.
One last correction before i go to bed "Roughly a third of AFTAL members have resigned" thsi is simply incorrect, and i think has been based on the number system used on the AFTAL dealers list. But some of those numbers were either not used or had belonged to dealers that had perhaps retired or been removed from AFTAL.
I think some people are also under the misaprehension that because AFTAL has shareholders etc, that it is somehow underhand or wrong, and i can understand why some may see it that way. But, and i do not claim to be an expert in company law, i think the law regarding companies in the UK is not the same as that in the USA, but the only legal way to create AFTAL and at the same time protect it and its members from the possibilty of legal action etc, is to create and operate it as a limited company.
I do know that it could not have operated as a charity or similar, so i asume a limted comany it had to be. I think it is easier to do that in the USA.
Rich, i don't think you are the only one! Up until recently neither did i !!
I am not suggesting this at all, but if you look at the UACC, PADA or any other similar Association, you will see somehting similar, and you could easily make the same assumptions about those.
My position at AFTAL, i won't say within it, ended some time ago, and i was asked very simply to form a commitee to try and unravel what went wrong and how we could move AFTAL forward. It would have been very easy for me to walk away, but i did not, because i truly believe that this business is better off with an AFTAL in one form or another than without it.
So first i had to pull together half a dozen or so people that were known and trusted to both myslef and others within the business. That is not as easy as it may seem, but with some help from others it happened. Do you really think that those 6 other people would have come on baord if they thought that any of what has been said on here about me was true?
Those of you who have ever been any any board or committe will know and understand that if you are alone and running something you can do everything your own way. But once you get more than one you have to start to try and accept other peoples points of view and try and understand their opinions, even if you think they are 100% wrong. A compromise always has to be made, and things always take ten times longer than you want or others expect.
It was very difficult to even arrange a meeting as we live in about a 400 mile radius, but i can honestly say that evey single person on that commitee tried their very hardest to make everything happen, and to get to the bottom of what went wrong etc. Some things we simply had to forget about, such as the god awfull statement that we first sent out. Steve called me about this before i had even got home from the meeting, and asked me who wrote it and why it seemed such gibberish! I explained that it was meant to be the basis of our statement, and was not meantto have been sent out as it was, but the die was cast, and form that moment on we were defending ouselves and AFTAL at the same time.
I thought we had reached a climax last week, when all sorts of things happened, ending the dealer being threatened, and about that i cannot say any more as it is now a Police matter.
Myslef and the rest of the commitee tried to do the best we could, but all the time we had people on here throwing stones, often without any just cause or reason, whilst others plotted other means to destroy AFTAL or sling mud or worse.
If we had not had an AFTAL at all, or the commitee had not pressed as many buttons as it did, do you think we would now be where we are now? I think not. And if AFTAL never returns how do you think the autograph business in the UK will go? It will only allow the forgers to proliferate once again.
The fact that AFTAL has shareholders, and that things have happened the way they happened provides a huge incentive for certain people to want this gone. It really does add in a completely different element to this problem. Because it brings in big money and multiple vest interests. And im not speaking to the steering committee here, but instead at the crooks and criminals behind this. When you start adding in stock shares and money coming from many different parties that revolve around how an organization does financially, this becomes a very complex problem. Now knowing that AFTAL has shareholders, it seems obvious that its not just Dominic Manning anymore. No doubt that the parties who are very heavily financially involved are now exerting influence.
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