Ben Milch David Rubenstein and Wheretheyaint.com WARNING

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

I thought I would warn anyone of fraudulent activity of a former ebay user-- former because as of Feb 10, 2009 he was suspended indefinitely. The user id was wheretheyaint-dot-com and changed to user07030 on Feb 7, 2009. The id is registered to a Benjamin Milch who is also the registered owner of Wheretheyaint.com, LLC. He works with a guy named David Rubenstein and they are located in Hoboken, NJ.

They listed cards on ebay with stolen scans and removed watermarks that were placed on the images. They also blocked out the cert numbers so they could not be identified easily however the cards had other features which made them easily identifiable to the owner. The cards were never in their possession and the owner of the cards never authorized them to sell them.

Ebay has suspended them however they still maintains a site at www.wheretheyaint.com listing hundreds of thousands of dollars of cards. I have no idea if they own these cards, are in possession of them or are even authorized to sell them. If someone truly has inventory worth hundreds of thousands of dollars it would not reason they would perpetrate fraud and risk their reputation and business. I have reason to doubt the material listed on their site is actually available.

At this time I am cooperating with local law enforcement as well as with the FBI and cannot speak about the specifics of the case. While the investigation is going on, and at my earliest opportunity, I wanted to get the word out there to prevent anyone from being victimized by these people.


Greg

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Posted By: Ted Sherman

Thanks, I got some email saying they had some cards I needed, and I inquired about price. They were so far out of line I didnt even respond.

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Posted By: Anthony S.

so "wheretheyaint" is a reference to the cards they don't have which they're trying to sell anyway.

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Posted By: Steve

Thanks for the heads up.

Steve

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

Can someone who is a member of CU's boards please post this over there for me?

Thanks,

Greg

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Posted By: Ben

WhereTheyAint.com, LLC is a reputable company. We love baseball cards and other baseball memorabilia, and we buy and sell them to others who love them and who love to own, invest and trade in them. We run a profitable business and have worked hard to earn a reputation of being knowledgeable in the business. We treat our trading partners well, and they reward us by continually coming back to us to do more business.



We are posting this notice to respond to certain scurrilous accusations about us that are being posted on the web by Greg Schwartz.



We offered 2 cards for sale to Greg. We knew where we could buy them for less money. The difference would be our profit. Greg found out from whom we were going to buy the cards and found out what we were going to pay. He just got angry at himself and decided to take it out on us. He is acting like a child in throwing a tantrum and wrongfully accusing us of fraud and other bad acts, all because he is embarrassed at the deal he made with us. He has made a bunch of improper and wrong statements to eBay which has caused our account there to be temporarily suspended. We are in contact with eBay and have no doubt that the suspension will be lifted shortly. He claims that he is cooperating with state and local law enforcement officials. Unless making a profit in the market is wrong and un-American, then they wont be interested, because we did nothing wrong. We made a deal and have an enforceable contract with Greg to sell him these cards, and he interfered with our efforts to consummate that deal, and the deal fell apart. We are the wronged party, and we will be suing him for his breach of that contract.



We invite everyone who reads this posting to contact us through our web site, www.WhereTheyAint.com , so that you can see for yourself that we are who and what we say we are.

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Posted By: marshall barkman

Well Greg....we are waiting your response. Seems like their is alot of lawsuits and investigations in the baseball card business.

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Posted By: ramram

So, I guess that means I can go to Leon's website (or anybody elses for that matter) copy his scans and list all of his cards on ebay for a profit and not tell him?? Hmmm, am I missing something?

Rob M.

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Posted By: marty q

rob m- has it right, you take anothers scan and offer that card to somebody for more money not telling the buyer or the "real" owner you are making believe that you own the card before hand. real nice...



wheretheyaint pleas answer these ?'s- did you remove water marks on another owners cards????????????



did you use another owners own scans to sell cards??????????????????



how long have you been doing this ethical practice???????????????????



do you really think you are right for doing this???????????????????

did you block out cert #'s on cards???????????????

just my opinion- but if you did remove water marks and other forms of owners proof you are a scam artist to say the least. maybe your website with all of these cards needs a looking over. maybe 50% of your inventory is not your inventory???

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Posted By: leon

For the record I own most of the cards on my site.....any for sale could even be owned by me too....

Now that is a new business angle that isn't so new. Sell something you don't have and then go buy it if it sells....I should have thought of that!!

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Posted By: Matt

I don't know the legal ramifications of such a business model, but practically, it seems to be incredibly shaky. What happens if you sell a card and then turn around to find that your source already sold the card to someone else?

My Trade/Sale Page

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Posted By: Sean C

The blog page is full of stories from other sites (Beckett, etc.).

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

Ben,

You post comes off as so innocent and you imply that you were doing me a favor by in essence, brokering cards that I wanted. You offered cards up for sale on eBay to the public, not to me. Cards you did not own, did not have the authority to sell and you did it by removing watermarks and cert numbers. Neither the person who owned the cards nor the person who offered them to you gave you permission to do this.

Ben, you must be getting your legal advice from your business partner, David Rubenstein who seemed to have some difficulty practicing law since graduating law school. Maybe it is time for a real lawyer. You cannot enforce this contract. You violated eBay's policy on Seller Non Performance. You have to have the authority to sell items you list. To everyone else that sounds reasonable but not to Ben Milch and David Rubenstein.

Newsflash Ben!!!!! The Buy It Nows were hit on the auctions because I know who the cards belong to. I knew you did not have them. I knew you did not have the authority to sell them and I did not want someone buying something, sending you money and getting an empty box. Ben Milch and David Rubenstein are frauds--common criminals who think they are smarter than everyone else.

eBay was simply provided factual information Ben from various sources. They do not take suspending a member lightly due to the legal remedies available to their users should they have acted too quickly and interfered with someone's livelihood. That is why it took them 7 days in which to shut you down. Your suspension will be permanent as other retailers have filed complaints about your offering cards of theirs for sale. Wanna see the emails I have received?

Any other lies you want to add?

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Jeez, Greg, sounds like someone needs a stimulus check to get through these tough economic times.

Oh and btw, that chair you're sitting on? I just sold it on ebay for $20. I'll send you a check for $12 next week.

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

Jeff,

You might want to post your contact number for Ben and David. Gotta run the movers are here to take my chair.

Greg

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Posted By: Red

There's a lot of brokers out there who will sell cards they don't own. They know they're available for sale someplace else and if they can flip them for a profit that's what brokers do. The only legal issue will be if they take money for a card and don't deliver the exact card purchased.

If somebody knew your chair was for sale, and they knew somebody else who needed a chair, then they might try selling your chair to the other person. They would then come back to you, buy the chair, and then deliver it to the other person. If money changed hands and the chair was no longer available it would be expected that things would be made right. If not, then there's an issue.

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Posted By: Brian

You just can't this stuff up...

ps
I like applesauce

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Posted By: mark s.

ben-

because of YOUR business practices/ethics, as well as the memorable song & dance routine you performed so admirably for us, you must realize that you are, at the VERY least, guilty of buffoonery*...

*edited for spelling

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Posted By: Kyle

Is brokering a word? Anyway the main issue at hand is the theft of intellectual property rights aka ebay photos, scans, etc that have been marked. I don't have a problem with people selling an item that they currently do not have in their possession-as long as it is delivered in a reasonable time. Beyond that again thanks for a heads up and I hope to read more about chair sales. I sit on a stool.

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Posted By: JDRUM

"brokering" may be a word, a couple pages before "buffoonery" in the dictionary.

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Posted By: Bill

I posted a similar message on the CU forum about 8 months or so ago but for some reason was the thread was deleted.

The first time I stumbled across his auctions it was a 1958 or 59 Topps Mantle PSA 9 with the cert # removed. If you sort eBay auctions by highest price first, his was directly above the real card but priced $500 higher. When I asked for the cert #, he responded by sending me the cert # of the card that was listed directly above his.

Either way you spin it, image theft is a vioaltion of eBay policy.

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Posted By: mark s.

ben-
...furthermore, may i suggest that YOU consult a dictionary!
there was absolutely NOTHING "scurrilous" whatsoever about greg's comments...
NOT coarse, abusive, vulgar, foulmouthed OR indecent, in ANY way!
however, when i researched the term buffoon(s)/buffoonathon/buffoonery online, i found a direct link to WhereTheyAint.com!
imagine that...

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Posted By: Steve

I see no problem in brokering items.

As long as the owner of the item has given
his/her permission.

In the case here I believe the true owners had no idea.

I'd have to agree with BOTN here.


Steve

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Posted By: Peter

I cannot get over how brilliant the name Wheretheyaint.com is. Ben and David - were you actaully laughing when you came up with that name? I bet you were. I was wondering why their prices were double what the cards were worth.

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Posted By: Eric B

Using a scan is not theft of intellectual property rights. It's free use. An exception would be if someone took a card and displayed it next to a bowl of fruit and called it an artist's work, or something similar.

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Posted By: mark s.

are there no LEGAL ramifications to the practice of "borrowing" scans, removing watermarks, then using the images for commercial (profit making) purposes?

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Posted By: Laura

I am not so sure about how copyright law affects scans of cards. Part of the issue is the age of the card itself. Another part of the issue is the scan that the owner of the card has created.

The U.S. Copyright Office states that "Copyright protects 'original works of authorship' that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. The fixation need not be directly perceptible so long as it may be communicated with the aid of a machine or device."

With cards, we're dealing with copyright law regarding publications, under works of visual arts (see this link for some interesting info: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ40.pdf). Cards fall under the "publication" label by their nature.

And then you've got the whole issue of the scan of the "publication" and whether or not someone else is using your scan under the concept of "fair use."

IANAL (I am not a lawyer) and don't really want to devote my afternoon to wading through the copyright law website. But I am a photographer, and I personally feel that if I a) own a card, and b) make the scan of that particular card, then I own the scan, and someone using it to sell something that is mine (the card itself) does NOT fall under "fair use", and I'd be irked if someone did so.

But I don't know for sure. I suppose we could put little disclaimers in our auctions about "This scan is property of blah blah and may not be used without written permission blah blah legal crap..." but gosh, it just seems like bad manners to take someone else's scan, without their permission, to sell something that they own and you don't! Plain bad manners to me. ((shrug))

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

It's a scummy thing to do, period. Even more scummy than trying to sell cards on your website for 2-3x what they're worth. End of story.

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Posted By: marty q

copy rights, intellectual property rights, thats all great.....can we say it's just not a nice thing to do !!!! lets say it happened to you, then what?

removing water marks is a bad thing to do in my book, i dont care what bowl of fruit it sits next to.

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

Jeff,

Now you are being kind of scurrilous and you know what can happen if Ben and David read this...Not only will they call you out here but you may not get either of them as clients. Good thing you sold my chair.

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Posted By: Ben

To follow-up on the statements made about myself and WhereTheyAint.com, I wanted to let the community know that eBay has reinstated our account as they found no wrongdoing of any kind. This decision took all of one 30 minute conversation. Below is the email from eBay:

Dear Ben,

Thank you for writing eBay in regard to your concerns about your
account suspension.

I have reviewed the details of your suspension again and I am pleased
to tell you that we have decided to reinstate your account.

You can begin buying and selling again immediately.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

It was my pleasure to assist you and thank you for choosing eBay!

Sincerely,

Gillespie
eBay Customer Support


I will say, however, that eBay was not at ALL happy to find out that Greg a) bought 2 eBay auctions he had no intention of paying for b) used eBays service to learn my phone number and make threatening phone calls to me and c) spread negative statements, that he knew to be untrue, about my company. eBay informed me that it is now investigating Greg for eBay violations and abuse.


WhereTheyAint.com has been an eBay member in good standing for 10 years and has PERFECT 100% positive feedback. No "empty boxes" are shipped here. Customers are treated with respect and fairness, and always receive the card or memorabilia item that they pay for. We always offer secure payment methods such as Paypal and Escrow.com to keep our customers' mind at ease. Because of our contributions to the hobby and the industry, the National Baseball Hall of Fame recognized us as Lifetime Members.


We welcome anyone who reads this to visit our site at www.WhereTheyAint.com.


As a post-script, this is an email we recently received from one of our newer customers:


Ben,
I got my 54 Bowman Williams yesterday and wanted to tell you that I was really pleased. That is a really nice card and I'm proud to have it in my set. I've been actively collecting for 30 years. This is only the 4th time I've spent $3,000 on one card. The Williams made me the happiest. The Cobb Red Turkey made me the most money.
Thanks
Glenn L.
Atlanta, GA

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Ben, I think the concern that everyone has here is whether you sell cards you don't presently own -- and if the actual owners of the cards are aware you are taking their scans and selling their cards. Can you answer those questions?

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

(sounds of crickets chirping)

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Posted By: Anthony S.

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Posted By: Jim VB

Jeff and Dan,

As someone with about 30+ years experience in the retail industry, I can not think of a better business plan than being able to sell inventory that you don't own. The costs of carrying inventory has dragged down countless retailers. I used to hammer suppliers to give me 90 day payment terms. Then I would argue with our corporate bean counters to NOT add the dollars into my inventory until those 90 days were up. (Believe it or not, May Department Stores actually had an official policy covering this practice back in the 1980's. The policy was refered to as "Invoice Dating".) During that 90 day period, most, if not all of the goods would be sold, prior to it ever hitting my books. I NEVER attempted to sell any goods owned by any of my competitors, however. I don't know how I missed that wrinkle.

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Posted By: Peter_Spaeth

"We welcome anyone who reads this to visit our site at www.WhereTheyAint.com"

I have done so and see prices dramatically out of line with the market (just my opinion, of course), long lists of cards with no scans, and a few "featured" cards with scans from which the serial numbers have been removed.

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Posted By: Matt

I don't know how everyone missed this - their slogan, taken word for word from their web site is:

"We Hav'em Where They Aint!"


Their whole business is predicated on the aforementioned business model.

My Trade/Sale Page

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

Jeff,

You mean that neither Ben nor David sent you an email answering your question? I figured they had since they have not posted again. What do ya know!!! I am shocked.

10 years selling on ebay and they have managed to accumulate a staggering 186 feedback. Very impressive.

Greg