Brett Lemieux - Huge sports autograph/memorabilia fraud operation

[Watcher]

Originally Posted by RKH916

Thanks for the input. It's clear to me that there's a very concerted effort to minimise the scale of the op by people (companies included) with both substantial influence and interest in the matter.

I'll find the actual details later but I saw a clip on instagram earlier on a podcast with a guy who had been done for fraud in the past, stating that the whole thing is a sham, and that JSA specifically had sat down with him to authenticate a couple thousand items of his of which he knew a ton were fake... and they passed them all, except for two... one of which was actually real because he got the auto himself, in person. Also said the feds are aware of how dodgy the whole authentication industry really is

Very interesting. This also may have gone by people's radars, but with reference to the sort of blunders we've seen, I would highly recommend those unaware to look into the prototype Pokemon scandal. How cards allegedly "from the personal collection of Takumi Akabane" ended-up being examined through auction photos to identify a printing dot matrix pattern revealing the cards were printed in 2024, and not the mid-90's like they would need to have if they were authentic prototypes. I don't want to say anything out of tune, but it's important people find out the details of how this occurred, and considered that one of the named entities Lemieux mentions in his FB post is from the same portfolio of companies involved with that scandal. My personal view on this is there is a fact pattern here over two decades of being asleep at the wheel and running on autopilot mode, to the point where vulnerabilities were exposed by those who saw the opportunity and went for it.

[ReggieBush22]

Watcher,

I heard the UDA fakes were also created. Do you have any additional info on that? I always thought UDA was iron clad and it would be pretty hard to replicate. At least it created the largest barrier for forgers as it forced them to not only create the hologram but matching COA with hologram. Thanks.

[Watcher]

Originally Posted by ReggieBush22

Watcher,

I heard the UDA fakes were also created. Do you have any additional info on that? I always thought UDA was iron clad and it would be pretty hard to replicate. At least it created the largest barrier for forgers as it forced them to not only create the hologram but matching COA with hologram. Thanks.

All I can say is that he did sell UDA items. Below is one such example. It's the first I saw and reviewed more closely. The hologram ID shows as invalid.

[Watcher]

I just ask (because unfortunately this sort of thing has happened before, esp with YouTubers) - if anyone reading this content decides to use it, please acknowledge the source as being from these forums, and specifically from me. We all benefit as a community when we work together and acknowledge each others contributions and input. It takes time for me to review, compile and share this info, and I am freely sharing it as a public service and for collector awareness benefits.

[RKH916]

Originally Posted by Watcher

I just ask (because unfortunately this sort of thing has happened before, esp with YouTubers) - if anyone reading this content decides to use it, please acknowledge the source as being from these forums, and specifically from me. We all benefit as a community when we work together and acknowledge each others contributions and input. It takes time for me to review, compile and share this info, and I am freely sharing it as a public service and for collector awareness benefits.

Of course. You'd be surprised the amount of people that will find this thread over time.

I found the clip. It's Chris Panezich who was part of Operation Stolen Base

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fNGt1pD_d40

[Watcher]

In case anyone is seeing these screenshots and is not seeing the MisterMancave name, wondering how I can be sure it's him. First, as I mentioned in my opening post, there's tell-tale ways to mine this sort of thing, sometimes it's because bad actors did their darndest to make it more difficult to find their stuff.

I did 5 checks on the first 5 filtered results for UDA stuff he sold between 2017-2020. All 5 showed-up as invalid. Here is one example. As in the previous example, the paperwork shows UDA form to register the cert. In the listing below, he's workding it like it's ready to go, encouraging to enter the number and check all the details. Also, in case anyone is wondering, zoom in on the lower right corner of the images and you'll see the MisterMancave wordmark embossed in the image.

[Chris P]

I'm curious though if you were to ask UD themselves if the certs are legit. UD's Database might not have older items in their system. The Jordan jersey is shown from 2005. I dunno what the cutoff is but I've read from others that they've tried looking up their certs and they don't come up. They then reached out to UD and with pics of the items and coa UD was able to tell them if their items were legit.

[ninjacookies]

Originally Posted by Watcher

This is a layered issue and I'll explain what I mean. First, the manner in which he describes the listing is a clue. His listings would say to the effect that "JSA is the best" and that the piece came with a JSA sticker/holo. Not all the listings made reference to 'checking' the cert number through JSA's website. I believe this is one of the clues - particularly when looking at the pre-2019 listings - of him needing to work out some of the kinks of marketing a certification that could be checked online through JSA's online checking tool. How this variance in his marketing occurred is difficult to say for certain, however it's the way he kept his foiing tactics and appearances in balance that leads me most in believing what he said in his final FB post is all true. The question will remain - did people check their stuff when they got it, if the listings didn't give them enough details, and is it misrepresentation when the buyer didn't make the effort to vet the piece before they hit the bid or buy it now button. This is the part that gnaws at me, because in every hobby, in every caliber, there's always people that go by the label or 3rd party assurance being given to them, and often lean too hard on that assurance without doing the necessary due diligence to ensure what they have is genuine. Bottom line, some sellers have an aptitudue to seek out and hook such buyers, and distance themselves from those who ask too many questions.

The other is the use of stock images. This created a buffer for him to not have questions (and I'm not saying he didn't have any, but it allayed a lot of it) because people were reading the description, seeing his mention of JSA and going by his assurance it was legit. The photos were professionally taken as well, at least to look professional, by photo light box or studio level equipment. I mentioned this already, but he also wasn't stupid about mentioning he had multiples of something, and the way he doled them out to not show up in eBay's 90 day search is slick. In all, it means that he thought this through to the point of how mining this would still make it difficult to conclusively discern fake from real.

I've been doing professional appraisals now, some at an institutional level, meaning for museums and galleries. There is a certain manner of having to 'handle' such items to be able to go through the authentication checkpoints. When we are talking about doing 'inspections' by visual or photographic evidence, there are restrictions we must accept in how far we can take the authentication. When you are dealing with a living person, you can overcome some of those by asking for certain retakes, video, etc. In this instance, we can only go by what he left for us, and I wanted to make sure people understood this as a proviso at the very least. I am very good at being able to vet/authenticate through photos, I've done it with before/after swaps in 'slabs' and tracked changes through photography that occurred during the CGC scandal over a period of 13 years. The infrastructure in back issue/graded comics allows this, whereas in sports memorabilia, there are factors that are deficient of some of these variables and features, but I can still do a great deal of heavy lifting through what he posted on eBay.

All said, looking through the stock images and using exemplar sigs of each sports celebrity or athlete that he's marketed for having an authentic sig, you cannot see any difference. I don't believe that level of exacting quality and matching with every drawn element can be done by someone who isn't the celebrity, it must be mechanized, and cloned from a vector exemplar image. I cannot 100% be certain because with certain multiple listings, I never saw another of the same player - for instance the Steph Curry jersey he has on the online store he's sold multiple times last year, and the picture is the same as the one he has up on the website currently.

If I were to take a close-up of a Manning auto, you would not be able to tell the difference - they are identical. Before this, you would look at the images below and say, the one without the sticker is the one you have to question. Now, it's the reverse.

Example A:



Example B:

Interesting data. Thanks for sharing. It's obvious this guy was not your average basement scribe, which is evident by his scale of his operation. Probably impossible to tell if/which ones are created using autopen, but I'd have to imagine some kind of automated tool was used unless he was farming labor out (which would be highly risky). I'm with you in thinking he vectorized several legitimate samples of top players and used those as templates and perhaps even created minor nuances based on weighted averages. Not difficult at all if you have decent PS background and an exacting eye.

Originally Posted by Bosoxfan5990

Until card companies send out reps to witness the athlete signing every card or every sticker, this will always be in question.

Another portion of the equation. Remember the Dak scandal? I do. However, at least with pack pulled and explicity guaranteed autos the value is kinda sorta backed by the corporate machine behind the logo.

Much like our US dollar. Oh wait.....

[Watcher]

Originally Posted by Chris P

I'm curious though if you were to ask UD themselves if the certs are legit. UD's Database might not have older items in their system. The Jordan jersey is shown from 2005. I dunno what the cutoff is but I've read from others that they've tried looking up their certs and they don't come up. They then reached out to UD and with pics of the items and coa UD was able to tell them if their items were legit.

I can't comment on anything more than what I'm seeing, and what's in front of me. All the past UDA listings are invalid when doing a lookup.

What I will say is that this aspect (requiring registration with UD) makes this model of verification super-exploitative, particularly as we're learning of a forger who found industrious ways to forge not only sigs, but certs, stickers, holograms and entire models of authentication.

[Watcher]

Originally Posted by ninjacookies

Interesting data. Thanks for sharing. It's obvious this guy was not your average basement scribe, which is evident by his scale of his operation. Probably impossible to tell if/which ones are created using autopen, but I'd have to imagine some kind of automated tool was used unless he was farming labor out (which would be highly risky). I'm with you in thinking he vectorized several legitimate samples of top players and used those as templates and perhaps even created minor nuances based on weighted averages. Not difficult at all if you have decent PS background and an exacting eye.

Another portion of the equation. Remember the Dak scandal? I do. However, at least with pack pulled and explicity guaranteed autos the value is kinda sorta backed by the corporate machine behind the logo.

Much like our US dollar. Oh wait.....

Agreed on the bolded point - and one further: while most will immediately look at the scale by the numbers he refers to ($350 Million/4 Million items), it's actually the impact his actions have on the systems he's subverted.

The part that struck me the most is when I read "Oh yea almost forgot. We produced holograms and cards for their entire database."

I don't think people understand how significant this sort of thing is. When I was investigating the tamper holder incident, what the bad actor 'allegedly' was found to have done is swap books of lower grade into higher grade holders. But it didn't just end there. They were able to get those swaps back to the grader, and have images taken of those 'tampered' books within their lookup database. Meaning when they were selling them, the buyer would look-up the book and see it was identical. THAT they were able to get these tampered books back into the hands of the grader, who them imaged them to match the serial numbers, was when I began to see they had duped not only the collector market, but the people who were supposed to protect us from the bad guys.

When he talks about 'producing holograms and cards for their entire database' what people may not realize is that those fakes, including sigs, became part of the exemplars believed to be trusted. And given the length of time I can see (2014 - 2024) from his online selling activities, that's a long time to be subverting the sig/cert system.

This is the part people should be thinking about, at least on par, with the financial toll he allged.

[Nomad]

I think the above post is what's wrong with the collecting hobby approach. I am sure there were a million junctures where a human could have said "this is fake" and posted about it on a forum. And got some help for this fraudster.

When I first came back to US after pandemic, this antique shop had a signed Mickey Mantle picture and piece of something framed item. It looked way too new and clean, and the 80-year-old owner said he was selling it for $50, since he'd found out it was fake, after purchasing it for like $500 on eBay.

Or does one fake registered by AI as true, beget generations of "true fakes," ala Dali prints?

[Watcher]

Originally Posted by Nomad

I think the above post is what's wrong with the collecting hobby approach. I am sure there were a million junctures where a human could have said "this is fake" and posted about it on a forum. And got some help for this fraudster.

When I first came back to US after pandemic, this antique shop had a signed Mickey Mantle picture and piece of something framed item. It looked way too new and clean, and the 80-year-old owner said he was selling it for $50, since he'd found out it was fake, after purchasing it for like $500 on eBay.

Or does one fake registered by AI as true, beget generations of "true fakes," ala Dali prints?

You hit on an important point here, but sadly, it doesn't just stop there. To let me better explain, I have to take you again back to that tamper holder scandal.

It was Christmas break of 2024. I had just begun to hear rumblings of a potential scam involving an eBay seller who was swapping lower grade books, and successfully getting them not only into a higher grade holder, but sending them in for 'reholdering' and those books passing right under the nose of the grader.

The seller used multiple eBay accounts, but all of them had been quickly turned 'private', then changing their names, making it near impossible to go back and look through eBay's own system for evidence. Luckily, I have some experience with mining past sales that my appraiser background helped with. I spend that week going through thousands upon thousands of past sales records. I develop a pattern of distinguishing this sellers listings, going back to 2014, but having his real scamming breakout a few years later, starting off slow, then really cranking things out on a more regular basis by 2017.

That week taught me how to look at the patterning of a books entire sales lifespan, and every time it passed through that seller, something almost always changed. For the most part, I had good before and after pics, but to this day, it still eats at me that some of those listings looked like they had been scrubbed somehow. Maybe a bad day with data back-up on a server of some third-party data aggregator, maybe deliberate intervention to hide something by the perps. We'll never know, and we wouldn't know at all if it wasn't for me doing what I was doing.

All in all, I found examples to prove he was doing this and began sharing them. I knew almost immediately two things were going to happen. The first is that because of the passage of time, a lot of people were potentilaly going to get screwed in any compensation scheme the grader was going to offer. Why? Because many of these people bought in peak markets, and the downturn we began seeing after the pandemic, in some instances meant some books dropped in value as much as 50%.

The second was that the 'impacted list' was not all encompassing. I was finding tampering that was missed by their 'impacted list', and this concerned me greatly for a couple of reasons. The first is, as I mentioned before, the attempt to minimize or downplay to reduce the damage and exposure. But some were pretty obvious, I was sharing them online for the company to see.

Sure enough, people were being asked to send their books in for 'review.' Some people had to wait far longer than it needed to take. Some folks got a decent amount of compensation. Others were told they were going to get what their stuff was worth in the current market. Some of these folks bought their books years earlier, and the market in most cases was much stronger than when these scammers got caught, and while there are things like 'replacement value', the company decided they were only doing current fair market value.

That it took people like me to have to find the evidence to even have them wake up and see what was going on was one thing, but now they were even telling people that if their books were not on the list, they wouldn't see a dime.

Their books were still tampered with, and they still passed through the hands of this scammer (I have every bit of proof to show this), but they still were told it had to be on the list of 350.

I estimated the list could be over 1000, that's how many we're talking here, and it's not even accurate to go by that 350 number, because as the 'review' process continued, the number actually continued dropping because they were claiming the books were fine. While I was continuing to find more books they had missed.

Then they began scrubbing cert numbers on the database that were being used to prove the before and afters.

Then they used the evidence I worked free of charge to produce and share on their online forums as their exhibits in their lawsuit to go after the scammer.

It's easy to say that the main things that differentiate between then and now is money. Because it is. I saw a Youtuber talking about how 'unsafe' COA's were in the 80's, like we should expect things like operation bullpen or this 'Indian forgery' as a cost of keeping the machine well-oiled, but that is widely missing the mark. The money around this stuff now is WAY, WAY crazier than it was in the 80's. The scale of those scandals was nothing, both in terms of money and scale when compared to what Brett Lemieux is claiming. The way these scams subvert previously trusted systems is another big one, because back in the 80's, you'd have to wait until the internet to check on the name of the person or company doing the COA to find out they never existed. Now, the forgers are subverting not only the fake holograms and stickers, but they are getting their exemplar sigs into the database that are being recognized as legitimate, and even if people find out, the exposure is something they either don't want to look into, or don't know how to.

In an ideal world, when someone brings forward this information, details get confirmed, the Feds gets involved if needed, and compensate those who are out money.

Beyond me watching those people getting screwed with books they never asked to own because the grader was asleep and didn't find out about the tampering until the collecting community noticed, the thing that I knew right away is those impacted by this were seeing how shoddy the company was handling this scandal, and I knew right away they would not even bother with the hassles of sending their 'tampered' books in, they'd just dump them in the market. And that's what began happening.

Things could have certainly been handled better. They weren't. Minimizing exposure and money was the reason it wasn't. It always is the reason.

If I'm sharing what I am here, it's in hopes of giving people some semblance of truth of what really went on here, because no one else will do it here. If we hear from anyone at all.

The allure of those most deeply invested in any large-scale scandal will always be to push the narrative that there's nothing more to see here, that the investigators got this, and the only way we'll see anything is if the collecting community gets involved and shows it.

[Dacubs2]

Originally Posted by Chris P

I'm curious though if you were to ask UD themselves if the certs are legit. UD's Database might not have older items in their system. The Jordan jersey is shown from 2005. I dunno what the cutoff is but I've read from others that they've tried looking up their certs and they don't come up. They then reached out to UD and with pics of the items and coa UD was able to tell them if their items were legit.

This part is true. I had a buyback auto that I received from Upper Deck as part of a replacement back in like 2005. I never looked at the back of the COA card and on it, it said I could register my card in the database. I never did so and the hologram came up as invalid when I looked it up earlier this year. I had to send upper deck pictures of the card, front and back and the coa front and back and then I got an email that just said it is a valid item.

I wish they would have sent me something on upper deck letterhead or something, but oh well

[RKH916]

On the point about the sigs in the database... Did anybody end up watching the clip I posted with Chris Panezich above? He claims his fake autos are in JSA's exemplar database, also.

If he's spoiled JSA's exemplar database (whose sole purpose is authentication), it tells me this: There is no provenance in any authenticator's database, and quite literally nobody knows if the "origination" material being referred to for authentication is even legitimate to begin with, which logically follows: You can't trust anything beyond that which you know yourself to be real.

The "operation downplay" to reduce the impact and scope of the fraud is thus meaningless anyway: the whole damn thing is a house of cards to begin with.

[RKH916]

Originally Posted by Dacubs2

This part is true. I had a buyback auto that I received from Upper Deck as part of a replacement back in like 2005. I never looked at the back of the COA card and on it, it said I could register my card in the database. I never did so and the hologram came up as invalid when I looked it up earlier this year. I had to send upper deck pictures of the card, front and back and the coa front and back and then I got an email that just said it is a valid item.

I wish they would have sent me something on upper deck letterhead or something, but oh well

I wonder if there's any actual way of them knowing, or it's simply an employee matching the hologram with the mid 2000's and giving it a tick of approval? It seems to me that if they had any real internal records, they'd be automatically migrated to the database regardless of registration

[ReggieBush22]

Originally Posted by Watcher

All I can say is that he did sell UDA items. Below is one such example. It's the first I saw and reviewed more closely. The hologram ID shows as invalid.

Wow, this is disturbing. I thought UDA was iron clad but I guess not. Glad I never spent a penny on questionable memorabilia or any PSA/DNA cert cards. I always stick with on-card autos that are legit.

[ReggieBush22]

Originally Posted by RKH916

On the point about the sigs in the database... Did anybody end up watching the clip I posted with Chris Panezich above? He claims his fake autos are in JSA's exemplar database, also.

If he's spoiled JSA's exemplar database (whose sole purpose is authentication), it tells me this: There is no provenance in any authenticator's database, and quite literally nobody knows if the "origination" material being referred to for authentication is even legitimate to begin with, which logically follows: You can't trust anything beyond that which you know yourself to be real.

The "operation downplay" to reduce the impact and scope of the fraud is thus meaningless anyway: the whole damn thing is a house of cards to begin with.

Yeah, I heard Panezich's interview on the Sports Cards Nonsense podcast. JSA is a joke and a reason why I never spent a penny on their products. He said that out of like 3,800 fake items he got authenticated with JSA, only 2 were rejected, and 1 of the rejected one was actually legit LOL. All they pretty much do is look at the auto, compare to what they have in their database and if it looks legit, they authenticate it. It's a joke.

[csmtampa]

Originally Posted by ReggieBush22

Yeah, I heard Panezich's interview on the Sports Cards Nonsense podcast. JSA is a joke and a reason why I never spent a penny on their products. He said that out of like 3,800 fake items he got authenticated with JSA, only 2 were rejected, and 1 of the rejected one was actually legit LOL. All they pretty much do is look at the auto, compare to what they have in their database and if it looks legit, they authenticate it. It's a joke.

Panezich is full of garbage. His forgeries were amateur and well known across multiple autograph boards and communities. No authenticator passed them. I have yet to come across one his forgeries with a legit COA.

[ReggieBush22]

Originally Posted by csmtampa

Panezich is full of garbage. His forgeries were amateur and well known across multiple autograph boards and communities. No authenticator passed them. I have yet to come across one his forgeries with a legit COA.

Honestly, i don't have enough knowledge to comment. I only heard of this guy when I listening to the podcast. Maybe he is full of sh*t. Or you work for JSA and just trying to protect your brand. Just glad i didn't invest a penny in any of this questionable stuff.

[ninjacookies]

Originally Posted by Watcher

Agreed on the bolded point - and one further: while most will immediately look at the scale by the numbers he refers to ($350 Million/4 Million items), it's actually the impact his actions have on the systems he's subverted.

The part that struck me the most is when I read "Oh yea almost forgot. We produced holograms and cards for their entire database."

I don't think people understand how significant this sort of thing is. When I was investigating the tamper holder incident, what the bad actor 'allegedly' was found to have done is swap books of lower grade into higher grade holders. But it didn't just end there. They were able to get those swaps back to the grader, and have images taken of those 'tampered' books within their lookup database. Meaning when they were selling them, the buyer would look-up the book and see it was identical. THAT they were able to get these tampered books back into the hands of the grader, who them imaged them to match the serial numbers, was when I began to see they had duped not only the collector market, but the people who were supposed to protect us from the bad guys.

When he talks about 'producing holograms and cards for their entire database' what people may not realize is that those fakes, including sigs, became part of the exemplars believed to be trusted. And given the length of time I can see (2014 - 2024) from his online selling activities, that's a long time to be subverting the sig/cert system.

This is the part people should be thinking about, at least on par, with the financial toll he allged.

I'm just glad I've been out the secondary hobby market for over 4 years now and shifted my entire focus to crypto.

A blaster or two and my degen urges are satiated. No reason to deal with the extracurriculars.

[Watcher]

As I am going through the past listings, here's a repeating pattern I'm seeing on multiple jerseys. This is one I put together just before heading out for the day. Same jersey sold three times (Aug 11, 2017, Jul 28, 2017, May 20, 2016), all with the same UDA hologram ID (shows as invalid).

A few parting thoughts. The July to August reappearance could be explained by a relist, however keep in mind two things. One, that this usually triggers a change in the data repository, causing the past sales to drop if it shows up again within a certain period. Non-paying bidder, refund, whatever the scenario, that July sale shouldn't show-up anymore, and usually for people like myself who depend on this sort of thing to perform comparables research, we usually consider this more of an anomaly when this happens within the 60-90 day range of selling because that cycle of purging duplicate sales can be slowed by refund scenarios, etc. Here we are talking about listings from 8 years ago. Then we see the May 2016 and we have to assume something fishy went on here. However, while I'm not able to show you this pattern with other jerseys at this very moment due to time restrictions on my end, we have to consider this is not an anomaly, this is a repeating pattern with seeing multiple sales of the same jersey, and these are supposed to be unique framed examples. This notion the buyer needed to register them in order to show-up in a database - well, this exact scenario here reveals the super-exploitative nature of using this model of authentication when you have an alleged forger admitting to duplicating and forging stuff he sold.



For posterity, I'm including screenshots showing the holo ID coming-up as invalid:

[auburn35]

"The hobby", sneaking in another great memorabilia story before the end of the month.

Millions of dollars worth of Miami Heat memorabilia, including game-worn Finals jerseys, stolen and sold on black market in massive heist: report

https://nypost.com/2025/07/29/sports..._medium=social

[auburn35]

Originally Posted by auburn35

"The hobby", sneaking in another great memorabilia story before the end of the month.

Millions of dollars worth of Miami Heat memorabilia, including game-worn Finals jerseys, stolen and sold on black market in massive heist: report

https://nypost.com/2025/07/29/sports..._medium=social

Haven't seen any updates on the Brett Lemieux investigation, but thought I would update the Miami Heat story.

After paying some restitution, the defendant was requesting home detention and supervised release, but it's nice to see the government noticing the "hobby" isn't great at self-policing. Requesting a 36 month sentence.



A short recap, along with some fun text messages, after gaining access to the memorabilia storage room. I haven't seen the coconspirator named, but the California buyer of the stolen items, matches up with this article.
https://www.cllct.com/sports-collect...s-in-heat-case