Quote:
Originally Posted by calvindog
It's fruitless to have any real discussion on Net 54 about these issues because half the people have engaged in the very fraud being discussed. And while some will keep their mouths shut in order to not risk being outed, many others will do all that they can to obfuscate the issue, misdirect, or argue in favor of the fraud ("it's no big deal") in a useless attempt to get the heat off their area of fraud. Very tough to find genuinely objective people out here with no ulterior motives on these issues. The sad truth is the majority of hobbyists who have been buying and selling cards for decades have engaged in either shill bidding or card alteration, tax fraud, etc. relating to the hobby.
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I just wanted to add another type of fraud to the laundry list: consignors working with the auction house as co-conspirators to “pretend sell” items when no sale of any kind has occurred or in any way could even be interpreted as occurring, no invoice is even generated, no commissions are paid, nothing; the sale is just reported, and the item is secretly funneled back to the consignor at no transaction cost, but now with a reported historical auction sale price to reference, potentially making it easier for the consignor to sell his card at a later date (note: in this type of scheme, if the auction house/consignor shill bids were high enough, and had been sufficiently topped by a real bidder, then a sale would have occurred, though the winning bidder would have been cheated).