I too will proudly vouch that Mark is a stand up guy. Dan Mckee

Maybe you can help Leon
 

Leon - I emailed Mark Finn about your offer to help.

He should be emailing you with all the particulars.

Anyone out there with a similar Mastro auction problem?

If, as appears to be the case, a large portion of Mastro's claim is interest, in theory that should make the dispute easier to settle. And (easy for me to say, of course), it probably SHOULD settle. That said, settlement dynamics are not always perfectly rational, at least early in a case.

Does Leon have Doug's phone in his pocket? Why can Mike O'Keeffe get in touch with Doug but not Mastro/Legendary customers?

The solution is simple. People who own, run, or work for grading companies should stick to grading - not price guides (PSA -SMR), or prices realized (on the SGC home page). Becasue as soon as they stress the monetary aspects - they should not be allowed participate in bidding on any graded cards. They are indirectly generating "buzz" and it is self serving and a conflict of interest. Let the people who advertise in their magazines do that.

Here is the definition of a shill from Wikipedia.

A shill is an associate of a person selling goods or services or a political group, who pretends no association to the seller/group and assumes the air of an enthusiastic customer. The intention of the shill is, using crowd psychology, to encourage others unaware of the set-up to purchase said goods or services or support the political group's ideological claims. Shills are often employed by confidence artists. The term plant is also used. Shill bidding, found on many auction sites such as eBay, is punishable by law[1] and may result in fines and or prosecution.

Shilling is illegal in many circumstances and in many jurisdictions because of the frequently fraudulent and damaging character of their actions. However, if a shill does not place uninformed parties at a risk of loss, but merely generates "buzz", the shill's actions may be legal. For example, a person planted in an audience to laugh and applaud when desired (see claque), or to participate in on-stage activities as a "random member of the audience", is a type of legal shill.

he bought or sold these items?

I have not seen the complaint, but it looks like Dave Forman consigned those cards for Mastro to sell on his behalf.

Those are 4 consignments that Mastro sold on behalf of Forman.

Just conjecture, since I have absolutely no facts to back this up, but what about the possibility of Forman shilling for Mastro? It’s not inconceivable that they were working together with an agreement that Forman would re-consign whatever he, unfortunately in their eyes, won while bidding up lots. This could have been ongoing and lead to the massive “paper” debt in his name. Now that the Feds are involved and the books had to be opened, the excuse of a deadbeat bidder needed to be fabricated in order to disguise the shill scam. Any thoughts?

Nice Jackie!! Too bad the graders were harsher on Dave than the rest of us or it might have received a 100. :)

I think not Mr. Mitt. This has every appearance of a genuine dispute, to my eye.