Filed under: Beckett Media | Tags: ARMEN KETEYLAN, Autographs, bad reporting, BRYANT GUMBEL, COA, fraud, HBO, James Spence, journalism, lawsuit, Memorabilia, PSA/DNA AUTHENTICATION SERVICES, RICK BERNSTEIN
For the first time in his life, Bryant may wish he was Greg.
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
——————————————————————X
DONALD FRANGIPANI,
Plaintiff, COMPLAINT and
DEMAND FOR
-against- JURY TRIAL
HBO; BRYANT GUMBEL; RICK BERNSTEIN; Case No.:
ROSS GRENBURG;KIRBY BRADLEY; ANDREW
BENNETT;JOE PERSKIE; TRES DRISCOLL;
and ARMEN KETEYLAN,COLLECTORS UNIVERSE
INC., d/b/a PSA/DNA AUTHENTICATION SERVICES;
JAMES J. SPENCE, LLC, aka JAMES SPENCE
AUTHENTICATION; JAMES SPENCE,
individually; RICHARD SIMON SPORTS;
RICHARD SIMON, individually;
By Bill Berkrot Tue Jun 24, 6:22 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A sports memorabilia expert filed a $5 million defamation lawsuit on Tuesday against cable television channel HBO and those associated with its “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” program for a segment that accused him of participating in a large-scale forgery ring.
Donald Frangipani, a long-time authenticator of celebrity and sports autographs and other memorabilia, filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The suit names as defendants HBO, Gumbel, on-air reporter Armen Keteylan and several of the show’s producers.
The HBO piece entitled “Forger’s Paradise” was about fake signed sports memorabilia sold to the public over the Internet and the FBI investigation called “Operation Bullpen” that in 2000 broke up a forgery ring and seized an alleged $10 million in counterfeit memorabilia.
The segment named Frangipani as the forgery ring’s authenticator of choice and alleged that Frangipani had knowingly provided fake Certificates of Authenticity for thousands of forged items. COAs are used as proof that an autograph or item being sold is genuine.
The lawsuit accuses HBO of deliberately defaming Frangipani even though he was never indicted or charged with involvement in the forgery ring.
The suit claims the HBO segment relied on accusations by Sheldon Jaffe, who had pleaded guilty to taking part in the forgery ring and who it says “is very hostile” to Frangipani.
“The HBO defendants were grossly irresponsible and acted with malice when they repeated these statements without confirming the truthfulness of them, and led the viewer to such false and defamatory conclusions,” the suit said.
It further claims that the segment was deliberately edited “to mislead viewers into believing that Frangipani approved items without really examining them.”
The HBO report included the statement: “all told Frangipani issued COAs for thousands of pieces sent to him by” the forgery ring.
The suit says Jaffe sent some authentic items to Frangipani so that legitimate COAs could be forged as well. It claims Frangipani declined 50 to 60 items of more than 400 sent by Jaffe and that Frangipani did not learn that his COAs were being forged until it was revealed by Operation Bullpen.
Frangipani is seeking a jury trial and damages of not less than $5 million plus punitive damages and the cost of the suit.
HBO, which is owned by Time Warner Inc, did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the lawsuit.
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The Beckett Blog 
I still don’t understand how James Spence and PSA can look at a signature and tell if it’s real or forged. I think we have all seen the footage of the female news reporter who forged a signature at a card show and then she took it up to the James Spence booth and the guy barely glanced at it and marked it authentic. I’ve seen some really bad fake signatures pass. What do they check? The flow of the pen, letter consistency, pen pressure? Please, what a load of crap. It’s all just a money making scheme. The only way to know if a sig is authentic or not is if you actually see the athlete write it.
Comment by President Obama June 26, 2008 @ 3:42 amI can’t speak for that video you are talking about, as I have not seen it, but I do know it boils down to experience, just like anything else in life. I am using the numbers below in a purely hypothetical sense.
If you see something only one or two times, all similar things can look fairly identical.
Once you have seen it a few dozen times, you start to really pick up on the subtle things that are similar, as well as the subtle things that are different.
By the time you have seen something a hundred times, you can “glance” at it, and know everything about it.
My first few weeks in the grading room were like that with counterfiet cards. I thought I was fairly good at spotting them, but since I had only seen a limited number of each, I had to really study certain ones.
However, the senior graders could walk by my area, glance in and see what I was looking at, and say, “Fake!”
They’d only pause long enough to roll their eyes and smirk at me for being so ignorant.
They were right 100% of the time, too, which (naturally) always drove me nuts.
Comment by ejahnke June 26, 2008 @ 6:35 amIt can be tough. I know Huston Street has a full signature now with every letter of his name, but back when he was in college, his signature was slop. How can an authenticator differentiate between the two? Athletes change their signatures like that a lot. There is no way it can be 100% correct.
Comment by Moody June 26, 2008 @ 9:11 am