ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 31, 1996 TAG: 9610310052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: SCOTT BOWLES THE WASHINGTON POST
ATHLETES' AUTOGRAPHS are common today on balls, bats and all kinds of stuff. No wonder. Most, says the FBI, are fake.
Jim Pierce spent almost two months searching for something, anything, with an autograph of baseball superstar Ken Griffey Jr. It was to be a gift for his son Ronald's 10th birthday.
Finally, at a swap meet in Arlington, Va., Pierce excitedly laid out $250 for a Seattle Mariners jersey with Griffey's name scrawled across the back. But when he visited a sports memorabilia shop a week later and saw a baseball card, a bat and a magazine cover bearing Griffey's autographs, he was appalled.
``They looked nothing like the name on the jersey I bought,'' he said. ``I brought [the jersey] to the shop, and he told me I got ripped off.'' So have thousands of other autograph collectors across the nation. According to the FBI, a stunning 70 percent of all autographed sports memorabilia is fraudulent.
``That is a conservative estimate,'' said Chicago FBI agent Bob Long. ``Some indications are that it may be higher than that. But our policy is this: If you don't personally see it getting signed, beware, because more than likely it's phony.''
In an industry that has swelled to $750 million a year, the sports memorabilia market is teeming with con artists.
Many of their victims, Long said, ``aren't savvy businessmen or expert collectors, they're just fans who love an athlete. They think they're buying a part of an athlete they worship, but in many cases they're getting their dreams stolen.''
The crime is easy to commit, requiring only a pen, a piece of sports equipment and a zealous fan. Cracking down on it has been difficult and sporadic at best, Long said. ``We've taken some memorabilia to the athletes, and even they couldn't tell us whether they had signed it or not.''
Long's office uncovered one of the nation's largest sports fraud rings this summer. In August, investigators arrested Anthony Alyinovich, 29, of Chicago on charges of distributing nearly $5 million worth of jerseys, shoes and balls forged with famous athletes' signatures. Alyinovich, who pleaded guilty to mail fraud and is cooperating with authorities, also set up a bogus handwriting analysis and authentication company to dupe stores and customers, investigators said.
``It's frightening how high the level of fraud has gotten, said Jeff Doranz, owner of Jeff's Baseball Corner in Springfield, Va. ``I don't buy many autographed things anymore, and I'm in the business. I tell youngsters if they want to get a real autograph of a star nowadays, their best bet is to go to the ballpark and try to get it themselves.''
Even that can be risky. Baltimore Orioles officials say they have seen a rise this season in autograph scams at Camden Yards.
Cal Ripken rip-offs have become so common, said his marketing agent, Ira Rainess, that the future Hall of Famer has signed an agreement that he will sign merchandise marketed only by Scoreboard, a sports merchandising company.
Ripken still takes 15 minutes before every ballgame to sign items for fans, Rainess said, ``but we're hoping those things never go on sale.''
``The players have been put in a difficult position'' by the scam, Rainess said. ``On the one hand, they want to be accessible to the fans. On the other, they don't want to sign things for shady collectors. It winds up defrauding innocent people and disenchanting a loyal fan.''
Sports memorabilia, particularly baseball cards, became big business in the early 1980s as investors sought new collectibles after the stamp and coin market flattened. Over the next decade, the sports card market became saturated and autographs became the hot item.
Today, the cost can range from $20 for an autographed photo of Roberto Alomar to $5,500 for a baseball with Lou Gehrig's trademark tiny signature. (In contrast, Babe Ruth's bold signature, which fetches about $3,500 a ball, stands nearly an inch high between the stitches.) Neither, however, demands as much as Joe ``Iron Man'' McGinnity, the flame-throwing pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the early 1900s. A signed ball with his name commands about $15,000.
For years, the sports memorabilia business went unscrutinized by law enforcement. Long said federal investigators were unaware of the prevalence of fraud in it until 1993, when a Chicago resident contacted the FBI to report that he had been sold a baseball card with a phony signature.
``It was almost luck that we discovered'' the scam, Long said. ``This wasn't the type of crime we would normally have considered high priority. But when the agent started looking into it, we were stunned by the magnitude of the problem.''
LENGTH: Medium: 87 linesby CNB