Caught! Crook who sold Ruth fakes to FL pawn shops

[packs]

Maybe he thought the ball looked fishy.

[mdschulze]

Maybe so but if it were me, I'd want a totally different authenticator to look at it... not the original one who possibly made a mistake the first time.

[thecatspajamas]

Maybe he thought the LOA looked fishy rather than the ball itself.

[travrosty]

This whole thing stinks. everytime a psa or jsa cert gets copied, someone loses a lot of money. the only way some companies can combat it is to invest in a technology so expensive that individuals wont employ the same technology to copy it, due to its prohibited cost.

the company eventually recoups the technology investment over many years, but the individual doesnt have that luxury. they are just taking a regular piece of paper and printing the info and cert number on it. that's not security.

[RichardSimon]

They counterfeit money,,, counterfeiting a COA is a piece of cake for these crooks.

[drc]

The real LOAs have the PSA/DNA or JSA watermarks in the paper.

I suppose the forgers could forge the watermarks, but I'm not aware that's been done.

[Big Dave]

If you look at the PSA/DNA letter shown, you can see the watermark.

[glchen]

Out of curiosity, just looking at the sig in picture in the OP's post, does the Ruth look bad? Is there any other way that newbie collectors can protect themselves for this kind of scam other than getting the sig re-certified which can be a pain and expensive to boot?

[olsport]

PSA should use technology like todays currency in there certificates like watermarks, threads, special paper. Even then, the crooks could buy a real ball, make a fake ball, and use the real certificate with the fake ball, fake sticker. Too many ways to be a crook in sports memorabilia (or any other hobby)these days. Also, how can the authenticators be 100% certain something is real. We all know, they can't, especially if the dishonest crook is an expert at fakery.
That's the problem with anything that becomes valuable. Look at all the paintings that have been faked throughout history. A jeweler in my area got busted for replacing people's real diamonds with CZ's, when they brought them in for cleaning, ect.