Uninterrupted - The Real Stories of Basketball Episode 8
Uninterrupted - The Real Stories of Basketball Episode 8 - Forging Fame
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00:00The fans were still flying when their champions touched down this afternoon.
00:10On and off the court, Michael Jordan sets records.
00:13The Nike Air Jordan 13 sneaker sold for a record $2.2 million on auction.
00:18If Michael touched it.
00:19This is from the last, last dance, right?
00:22The last dance.
00:23Wore it.
00:24Michael was wearing it.
00:25I was admiring it, obviously.
00:27Or signed it.
00:28The craziest item I ever had was I had Michael Jordan's driver's license.
00:32It can be traded in the growing billion-dollar sports memorabilia market.
00:36I heard that it sold in 2006 for $800,000.
00:39But buyers of Jordan collectibles, beware.
00:42He never signs at the bottom of the jersey like this at all.
00:45One of the NBA's GOATs is inexplicably linked to one of the greatest sports memorabilia
00:51forgery rings of all time.
00:53And millions of fans who buy what they're told are authentic souvenirs wind up with
00:58bad memories instead.
01:00When overwhelming demand and the lack of supply collides, it creates an opening for a small-time
01:06Chicago hustler to become the king of the counterfeits.
01:10My associate forged Michael Jordan better than Michael Jordan signed it.
01:14But as the money pours in, I was clearing about $100,000 a month.
01:19The FBI will pour it on.
01:21What we quickly determined is that the market for fraudulent sports memorabilia was much
01:25larger than we had ever realized.
01:28Launching the first federal investigation into sports memorabilia fraud in the nation's
01:32history.
01:33We reached out to a representative of Michael Jordan.
01:37Federal authorities go on offense, chasing tips, interviewing middlemen, posing undercover,
01:44and even planting hidden video devices.
01:47We designed a custom peephole camera.
01:50But still, the ringleader remains elusive.
01:53My stuff was on SkyMall.
01:55My stuff was being sold at Michael Jordan's restaurant.
01:58My stuff was everywhere.
02:01Investigators finally seek help from the source.
02:05We realized that we were going to have to speak to some of the athletes, in particular
02:09Michael Jordan, and try to figure out what was going on.
02:12Legendary players, iconic teams, and epic moments in hoops history that changed the
02:21culture forever.
02:23Journey into the heart and soul of the game, both on and off the court.
02:27This is Uninterrupted, the real stories of basketball.
02:32I'm here to tell you that this next deal is the craziest package I have ever seen.
02:39Period.
02:41The craziest package I have ever seen.
02:43I'm going to give you three boxes.
02:48In the 90s, as the sports collectible market explodes, hucksters like Don West knew that
02:53there was one name that moves the merchandise.
02:55Fifteen to twenty Jordan cards per box.
02:59It was definitely not well regulated, and also just not well understood.
03:05You would see it on QVC, people were kind of buying things because they heard that there
03:10could be some large amounts of money tied to these.
03:12I believe the sports memorabilia market will probably one day reach where the art market
03:18is today.
03:19And ultimately, that resulted in the overproduction of trading cards during that time.
03:28Home Shopping Network and its celebrity endorsers have whipped unsophisticated sports fans into
03:34a buying frenzy.
03:36And that frenzy will enable a local sports fan with some unsavory contacts in the Windy
03:40City to build what was at that time the largest sports memorabilia forgery business in history.
03:46My name is Tony.
03:47I grew up in Chicago on the South Side.
03:50The early 90s was a totally different climate.
03:53I grew up in a neighborhood, a lot of wise guys, a lot of scams.
03:58Everybody had a connection in my neighborhood.
04:01Politicians, sports figures, Jordan and his whole crew.
04:06White Sox Park in our neighborhood, everybody had a connection to that ballpark.
04:10Back in, I believe it was the summer of 91, is when White Sox Park was being demolished.
04:16Out of the rubble of Comiskey Park, Tony will begin building his sports memorabilia business.
04:21Through 80 years, 15 presidents, two world wars, and 32 managers, Comiskey Park on the
04:26South Side of Chicago has been the home of the White Sox.
04:30This morning it was more than a symbolic out with the old and in with the new.
04:35500 fans and or mourners turned out for the old wrecking ball game, saying goodbye to
04:40an institution and picking up some souvenirs in the process.
04:49I had a lot of people asking me if I can get seats from the old stadium.
04:56Everybody wanted one.
04:58I knew one of the guys working at the demolition.
05:02You could buy your seats directly from the White Sox, I believe, for $100 a seat.
05:06I was getting them for $25 each.
05:10But the old seats proved to be small change when Tony discovers even more lucrative trash
05:15from the old stadium.
05:16I went into the dumpster, lo and behold, there were canvas bags.
05:20They looked like Santa Claus bags.
05:22When I looked into it, they were full of mail, and they were all addressed to Frank
05:26Thomas.
05:27Kids, adults, everybody from all across the world would send Frank Thomas baseball cards
05:33to be autographed with a self-addressed stamped envelope.
05:36Tony thinks he scores the unused stamps, but when he sells them to a store that also offers
05:41sports collectibles, he starts thinking about those discarded Frank Thomas cards.
05:47So the next day I brought a stack of them down, not a lot, and I think I got about $3,000
05:53for a stack of cards.
05:54Now the stack I sold was like this, and we're talking I got stacks like this.
05:57So I went to a baseball card show, and I set up a table, and I started my sports collection
06:04business right then and there that day.
06:07I had no expectation that this market was this rich in cash.
06:14Back when I was a child, the Hannes Wagner card was the most expensive card in existence.
06:21That was a $50,000 card.
06:23The highest price paid currently for a trading card is $15 million for a Mickey Mantle rookie
06:28card.
06:29My name is Brian Bersokas.
06:31I was a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, specializing in sports memorabilia
06:37fraud.
06:38Nobody really needs memorabilia.
06:40It's not something you need to live or breathe upon, but at the same point in time, it can
06:44tell a story.
06:45You walk through a person's memorabilia display, and they're so proud, and they'll tell you
06:50a moment in time where they acquired that, why they acquired it.
06:55About six months being in the legitimate sports business, I met a man at a show who told me
07:02he has access to Frank Thomas autographs.
07:06And I knew it was a lie because Frank Thomas wasn't signing anything.
07:10So I looked at the signatures that he had.
07:12They looked pretty good.
07:14He needed some Carlton Fisk baseball bats.
07:17So I went to my guy at White Sox Park, and he got me some bats, and I traded them for
07:22forged Frank Thomas autographs.
07:24With that simple exchange, Tony makes a leap from selling authentic memorabilia like stadium
07:30seats and baseball cards into the world of collectible sporting forged signatures.
07:35He will soon discover that creating a believable fake, even from a player long dead, can be
07:40as easy as finding an old pen.
07:42The market's primed for fraud and forgery because of the simple nature of it.
07:47The objects Babe Ruth would have signed a baseball with are still commercially available
07:51today.
07:52You can get a pen from the 30s, 40s, 50s, and sign a baseball with that.
07:57So the materials are readily available to commit that forgery as far as autograph forgery.
08:03As Tony embarks on what would become a massively lucrative forgery scheme, he does so with
08:08equally large helpings of rationalization and self-delusion.
08:12One of the first autographs I ever sold was to a little boy, and he wanted a Michael Jordan
08:18autograph, and I think the cheapest at that time was $120.
08:23And I sold him an autograph for $20.
08:25He was so thrilled, and I said, wow, I made him happy.
08:29If he can think that that autograph is real the rest of his life, I think I did something
08:34good.
08:35And then I started realizing about my own religion about a crucifix on a wall.
08:41The guy that sells you the crucifix, should he be arrested?
08:45Because how do you know Jesus is real?
08:47So I sort of had that in the back of my crazy mind, is that if you think it's real, then
08:53it's real.
08:55That's your decision to make.
08:57The FBI sees it a bit differently, and soon launches a manhunt for the man behind the
09:01colossal forgery operation.
09:04It will soon lead the feds to Chicago's most beloved sports hero of all time.
09:09So we just got in a car, went up to the Omni Hotel, and conducted an interview with Michael
09:14Jordan.
09:15In 1991, the Chicago Bulls win their first NBA title, beating the now-aging Showtime
09:23Lakers led by Magic Johnson.
09:25I'm a Bull fan.
09:27The team three-peats, becoming the league's most dominant team, with Michael Jordan as
09:31the face of the franchise.
09:32What can you say about Michael Jordan?
09:35Interest in signed Jordan memorabilia explodes.
09:39And with it, the number of fake items being offered for sale by unscrupulous sellers like
09:43Tony.
09:44It also attracts the attention of two FBI agents working out of the Chicago field office.
09:50Everybody in this town thrives on, you know, sport and sports teams.
09:55My name is Bob Walker.
09:56I'm a special agent with the FBI.
09:58I worked in the Chicago division from 1991 until 2023, and I investigate primarily financial
10:06crimes and money laundering.
10:08Back in 1992, the Chicago sports scene was on fire.
10:11The Chicago Bulls were obviously the hot item.
10:14Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen, they were a team on the rise.
10:18So I think it was the perfect storm in Chicago.
10:21The sports market was extremely hot at that time because of the Chicago Bulls and the
10:26success that they were having.
10:27People who collect memorabilia, it gives them a feeling of a connection to not just the
10:31sport but to the player in particular.
10:33Somebody like Jordan, who is really unreachable to the average person, I think it makes them
10:37feel like they have some sort of connection.
10:40My name is Michael Bassett.
10:41I was with the FBI for 25 years.
10:44I started out in Tampa, Florida, working public corruption and white collar crime.
10:49I got to Chicago in 1987 and was assigned to squad four.
10:53Pretty much it was a catch-all squad that captured everything that could be prosecuted
10:57using fraud by wire, mail fraud, those types of violations.
11:00But one day, his catch-all squad gets tipped to a crime he never even contemplated pursuing.
11:05I was never a collector of sports memorabilia.
11:08I was as familiar with it as maybe any other sports fan would be, but certainly had no
11:12concept as to the depth of the industry.
11:16What we quickly determined is that the market for fraudulent sports memorabilia was much
11:21larger than we had ever realized.
11:23Mike Bassett was my co-case agent.
11:26We worked together on this investigation as we did in many of the cases that we were assigned
11:31over the years.
11:32Initially, I worked on a squad that worked fraud investigations.
11:35That's what I was working in back in 1992, and that was the squad that held the case
11:42Operation Foul Ball.
11:45I got a complaint call from a citizen, a buyer who had purchased what was represented to
11:49him to be a game-used Frank Thomas baseball glove.
11:54For various reasons, he had come to suspect that the glove wasn't as represented.
11:59Either of us had never heard of game-worn sports merchandise being sold.
12:04We decided to run with it and see if, in fact, it was a fraudulent glove, that we could maybe
12:09trace it out to its source and see if maybe there wasn't something more to all of this.
12:14As Bob and Michael begin looking into the bogus Frank Thomas glove, Tony is embarking
12:18on his forgery business that was coincidentally sparked by some fake Frank Thomas signatures.
12:24The gentleman I met at one of the shows who got me the Frank Thomas autographs introduced
12:29me to a gentleman that was able to forge Michael Jordan better than Michael Jordan signed it.
12:36I would go buy everything and anything I could to get a Michael Jordan signature on it.
12:40Including something as simple as a magazine cover.
12:43Where does somebody grab 2,000 Sports Illustrateds and go to the airport?
12:51So I would go to O'Hare or I'd go to Midway and get there at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning.
12:56I'd buy every single Sports Illustrated at the airport.
13:03I would bring them back to my associate who would sign them.
13:07He'd put Jordan's signature on them, pack them up into FedEx boxes and send them across the country.
13:14I started just buying tens of thousands of baseballs, thousands of basketballs,
13:19thousands of jerseys.
13:21Of course I wanted to be a legitimate. The business was fun, it was interesting.
13:27I actually had legitimate signings with Jeremy Roenick, Rashaan Salam, Dan Marino.
13:33These are just some of them.
13:35But despite Tony expressing a desire to be a legitimate, he even uses these so-called
13:39authentic signing events to help peddle more forged merchandise.
13:43I would advertise in Sports Collectors Digest that I was having a legitimate signing with Ryan Sandberg.
13:50Autographs would be $60 each.
13:53People would send me their memorabilia and I would have Sandberg sign it, take a picture,
14:00send the items back to that person.
14:03Then I was able to have my forger sign 200, 500, whatever number it is, of 8x10 photos,
14:12baseballs and baseball bats.
14:15Then I would call my connections across the country that,
14:18hey, I need to get out of this Sandberg signing.
14:21I have somebody else coming in a couple days. I need cash.
14:24So I would have 15 different dealers buying 200 autographs at $20 each,
14:31knowing that me and Sandberg just had a signing.
14:34When in fact, Sandberg only signed 100 items.
14:39And I would do that with multiple athletes.
14:42Everybody wanted something.
14:44Everybody, could you get me helmets? Could you get baseballs? Can you get photos?
14:48As Tony's forging operation expands, he rents storage space to store the basketballs
14:53and other items he will soon grace with a fake signature.
14:57I would drop all the material off at the warehouse.
15:00My associate would show up, sign everything, and then I'd drop off the envelope of cash.
15:06And Tony finds an easy way to get an athlete's real signature to then copy.
15:11There was a baseball card company in the early 90s that put out baseball cards
15:17and they stamped the black signature on the cards.
15:20It was the same thing with one of the basketball companies.
15:23As a reference point, you would just take one of the sporting cards and look at it for an autograph.
15:29The gentleman that was forging, he was so good at it.
15:33He would look at an autograph and he can sign it right on the spot.
15:37He could take a Bulls basketball and sign Jordan, Pippen, Horace Grant, Cartwright, John Paxson,
15:45right down the line without hesitating. And every signature was spot on perfect.
15:50As Tony's criminal enterprise grows, so does the FBI's investigation.
15:54What started with one fake Frank Thomas mitt will grow into a massive case codenamed Operation Foul Ball.
16:01But they decide to keep it need-to-know.
16:04We didn't want to get over-involved with the athletes,
16:06and primarily because we didn't want it getting out a whole lot that we were out doing this case at the time.
16:11At the beginning of the investigation, we talked to Frank Thomas.
16:15He looked at it and he was able to say right away, that's not my glove.
16:18I never wear that glove in a game. It's not even the right size.
16:21The glove was, in fact, fraudulent.
16:23And from that, we were able to trace the glove with the assistance of the buyer to its source.
16:30It was a small sports memorabilia dealer based out of the Chicago area by the name of Jim Hall.
16:35He had sold the glove to the California individual.
16:39We started looking into Jim Hall's activities.
16:44It was an organized ring that was producing a large quantity of sports memorabilia here in Chicago
16:50that was being shipped out nationwide for resale.
16:53There were at least three forgers.
16:55One being Jim Hall, the man who had sold the Frank Thomas glove,
17:00and two other individuals, John Schwartz and Kevin Walsh.
17:04They were two local Chicago guys.
17:06They were the two primary forgers.
17:09Forging large quantities, primarily bull stuff, they were specializing in.
17:13And it was anything you could think of.
17:15This was an organized network.
17:18The first of its kind, specifically within sports memorabilia.
17:22And at the top of that network, Tony.
17:25Eventually, we gained enough evidence that we wanted to approach Jim Hall and see if he would cooperate.
17:31If he does, there's only one name the feds don't already know.
17:36Jerseys were hard to get.
17:38I had a hard time getting wholesale jerseys, so I would have to pay retail.
17:43I would go to Sports Authority, Sport Mart.
17:46Find what you're looking for at Sport Mart.
17:49Even as the FBI's Operation Foul Ball begins closing in on Tony,
17:53he's still expanding his forgery operation, believing he is outsmarting the feds.
17:58I had a friend. She would come to a lot of these events with me.
18:02I don't think she knew the extent of what I was doing, but she knew that what I was doing wasn't right.
18:07Especially when Tony starts telling people she's the daughter of White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorff.
18:13I started an alias. I called her Sherry Reinsdorff. That was Jerry Reinsdorff's daughter.
18:18I don't even know if Jerry Reinsdorff had a daughter.
18:20But now everybody thought that my girlfriend was Sherry Reinsdorff.
18:26She had an American Express card, and I asked to borrow it one day.
18:30And I think I spent about $60,000 on her American Express card.
18:35And she almost had a heart attack when she got the bill.
18:38But I paid it, and I continued to use her card,
18:42thinking that the government's never going to pay attention to her,
18:46that I'm under the radar, and I can buy whatever I want to buy.
18:50I tried to be low profile. I didn't have a new car.
18:53I lived in an apartment with my grandmother who was 88 years old.
18:58Wasn't taking extravagant trips, just saving the money,
19:02but I was also reinvesting it in inventory.
19:05I would get everything prepared to get signed,
19:08and then I would make my phone calls to everybody across the country,
19:12seeing who wants what.
19:14I started from being in a dumpster pulling out a bag of mail
19:18to having a connection in New York City, in Boston, in Philadelphia, in Cleveland.
19:25Every city I had a connection.
19:27I was clearing about $100,000 a month.
19:29I would sell hundreds of photos, hundreds of basketballs.
19:34I would have four or five trucks lined up to pick up my deliveries.
19:38I started realizing that the guys I was selling to,
19:42one of them advertised in SkyMall.
19:45My stuff was on SkyMall.
19:47My stuff was being sold at Michael Jordan's restaurant.
19:50My stuff was being sold at the United Center.
19:53My stuff was everywhere.
19:56But the size of Tony's operation works to the FBI's advantage.
20:00He's leaving a lot of clues.
20:02We started from the ground up like you would do in any investigation.
20:05We were able to obtain financial records through grand jury subpoenas,
20:09look at credit card records, look at bank records.
20:12The reason behind that is we're trying to figure out,
20:14were they purchasing the raw materials that they're forging?
20:18Were they purchasing the jerseys, the basketballs, the shoes?
20:22They also began focusing on the retailers,
20:24selling the items Tony is affixing with fake signatures.
20:28One of the things we needed to prove at every phase of the investigation
20:31was that the individuals who were receiving these items
20:34and then reselling them knew, in fact,
20:36that the autographs on there were fraudulent, were forged.
20:40By looking into the financial records,
20:42we were able to come up with various locations where purchases,
20:45large purchases, were being made.
20:47We also used surveillance, a lot of surveillance.
20:50So we would follow the subjects of the investigation.
20:53We would watch them go to different locations buying the materials,
20:57would watch them taking them to different warehouses.
21:00They were normal people, extremely intelligent.
21:03You know, I will say they were extremely hardworking and organized.
21:07They just saw an opportunity, and they took advantage of it.
21:10And the demand for Jordan's signed memorabilia is only growing.
21:14When the Bulls repeat as champions in 1992, Chicago fans rejoice.
21:18Michael Jordan is also celebrating his new lucrative sponsorship deals
21:22with blue-chip companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald's.
21:33For Tony, Jordan signing new contracts fuels his business
21:36of selling fake Jordan signed merchandise.
21:39It wasn't just United States collectors.
21:42There was collectors from Japan and Venezuela and Canada and Britain.
21:49It was this frenzy.
21:51You had the Bulls, the darlings of the NBA, the world beaters
21:55that were winning championships, had the stars, had everybody.
21:59It was the perfect moment at the perfect time
22:02for a group of individuals to take advantage.
22:06It was unbelievable.
22:07None of the Bulls were interested at that time to do any signings.
22:10They were making too much money doing what they were doing.
22:13You put $10,000 in Jordan's hands to have him sign 15 Sports Illustrated covers.
22:18Tell me what happened.
22:19Wouldn't do it.
22:20He wouldn't do it.
22:22It was almost impossible to get a Michael Jordan autograph
22:25because he had a contract with Upper Deck.
22:28Upper Deck, founded in 1989, is looking to grab a piece
22:31of the growing national sports card market
22:34that, along with a surge in popularity, is suffering from a rampant counterfeiting.
22:39Hey, Sean, hit the boards or hit the game.
22:42Upper Deck differentiated itself from companies like Tops and Score
22:46by using cutting-edge anti-counterfeit holograms on their foil wrapping and cards.
22:50We have heard many stories of hobby dealers recommending Upper Deck cards
22:55because they are counterfeit proof.
22:57In 1992, they launched Upper Deck Authenticated, or UDA,
23:02the industry's first patented autograph authentication process.
23:07UDA consists of a five-step process that guarantees fans get an authentic autograph
23:12because company representatives witnessed every signing.
23:16Michael Jordan was under contract at that time to sign only items provided to him by Upper Deck
23:21and they would be subsequently sold through Upper Deck.
23:24Upper Deck takes you there.
23:25He wasn't signing outside that agreement.
23:27But Operation Foul Ball still has lots of non-Upper Deck Jordan sign items,
23:31so they asked the company for help.
23:33We were getting so much Jordan stuff that we thought of nothing else.
23:37We want Upper Deck to be able to come in and say,
23:39listen, there's no way Michael Jordan signed this stuff, and here's why we can say that.
23:44We wanted to focus on a way that we would not involve the athletes in this investigation.
23:48We did not want to have a case where they were going to have to come into a courtroom and testify.
23:53Bob and I believed our case wasn't going to be proven by an athlete looking at his signature
23:59and saying, hey, that is mine or that isn't.
24:01It just wasn't going to be reliable.
24:03Not reliable because athletes like Michael Jordan are bombarded by fans
24:07asking for autographs in all kinds of awkward settings.
24:10They sign items while walking, leaning over a barricade, or while being jostled in tight crowds.
24:17Take a look at all these different authentic Jordan signatures.
24:21Even courtroom handwriting experts can face tough cross-examination
24:25if they can't explain to a jury why an athlete has a lot of different-looking signatures.
24:30The FBI decides they need to do some face-to-face investigating.
24:34We realized that we were going to have to speak to some of the athletes,
24:37in particular Michael Jordan, to determine what his signing practices were.
24:44In 1996, as Michael Jordan closes out another championship,
24:48the FBI agents spearheading Operation Foul Ball look to close out their investigation
24:53with the help of Jordan's exclusive signed merchandise partner.
24:57After the NBA Finals, Upper Deck facilitated a meeting between us and Michael Jordan
25:02during one of his signings.
25:03You got to see the quantity of what he was signing in one day.
25:07The suite was full of jerseys and basketballs.
25:10He was great, very professional, very supportive of law enforcement,
25:14supportive of what we were doing.
25:16We made it real clear to him that our goal was to keep him out of this as a witness.
25:21We were going to try to do this by using other methods
25:25to prove that this stuff was forged and fraudulent.
25:28What Jordan was able to tell us is that he'd only signed, like, three shoes in his entire life,
25:33and he could tell us where they were.
25:36We were having quite a few sneakers, some represented his game use,
25:40that were autographed and going out, and a lot of size 13 Michael Jordan basketball shoes.
25:45Then, Jordan reveals something that the agents missed
25:48that will make identifying forged signatures on those size 13 shoes easy to prove.
25:53Jordan only wears size 13 on his left foot.
25:56His right is 13 1⁄2.
25:58So this pair of shoes we had that were both 13s, he liked the autograph.
26:03He said the autograph was very, very good,
26:05and that he couldn't necessarily say that it was forged,
26:08but that he knew he never signed it.
26:10It is one of the few slip-ups made by the Jordan forgery mastermind the feds are chasing,
26:15confusing things more.
26:17Not all of Tony's signed Jordan memorabilia were fakes.
26:21So the craziest item I ever had was I had Michael Jordan's driver's license.
26:26I had a friend of a friend who called me
26:29and said that Jordan got his license renewed at the Secretary of State's office,
26:33and at the time, your whole social security number was on the license.
26:37They would punch out the metal two numbers and throw the license in the garbage.
26:41So I remember I bought it off of him for $5,000,
26:46and I sold it to a Japanese investor for $25,000,
26:50and I heard that it sold at auction in 2006 for $800,000.
26:55But there's an added benefit to once owning Jordan's actual license.
26:59It brings some credibility to all the fake Jordan merch Tony is selling.
27:03I would always be getting letters and phone calls from people
27:07wanting to know if I could set them up with Michael Jordan.
27:10I'd never, never even met Michael Jordan.
27:13But in the world of fake Jordan signed collectibles,
27:16it can almost seem like buyers want to be fooled.
27:18There was a photograph of Dennis Rodman and Sean Kemp fighting for a rebound,
27:24and it was in the NBA Finals when the Sonics were playing the Bulls.
27:28The photograph was taken at a game in Seattle,
27:31and before the Bulls even landed back in Chicago,
27:35that photograph was being sold with the forged signatures of Dennis Rodman and Sean Kemp.
27:41Just based on time alone, it couldn't have been printed out and signed by them that quickly.
27:46We did talk to both Sean Kemp and Dennis Rodman,
27:50showed them the photograph before the next game that was taking place at the United Center,
27:55and asked them, did you sign this?
27:57And unequivocally, no from both of them, so it was pretty cut and dry.
28:00By now, the FBI is closing in on Tony,
28:03piecing together how his enterprise operates.
28:06The leader of the organization was obtaining raw materials for this project,
28:11primarily basketballs and official NBA leather basketballs,
28:15and he was buying them from SportsMart.
28:18Just by coincidence, there was a Saturday
28:21when I was at SportsMart and buying something for myself,
28:25and they invited me to join their Buyer's Club as I was checking out.
28:30In the 1990s, the Buyer's Club is a new program at SportsMart to build customer loyalty.
28:35Every purchase earns members points that can be redeemed for future discounts.
28:39But its real benefit for the FBI is that members must supply their name and address to join.
28:45At SportsMart.
28:46As I was leaving the store, the light bulb went on.
28:49Perhaps if they'd offered this to me, that they'd likely offered it to our organizer,
28:55maybe we'd get lucky and he was also a member of this Buyer's Club.
28:59And if he was, that certainly we could then track through the Buyer's Club
29:03everything he'd ever purchased from SportsMart, which would be real valuable evidence to us.
29:08Now, when Tony calls SportsMart to place an order, the store alerts the FBI.
29:13Agents then head over and mark each item that Tony purchases with a black light marker.
29:18After Tony picks up the items, they conduct surveillance
29:22and watch Tony unload his purchases into his warehouse.
29:25We would see the main subject going in and out of there with cartloads of basketballs.
29:30Nobody from the Chicago Bulls was showing up.
29:32No professional athletes were showing up.
29:34Later, those items would ship out via FedEx.
29:38So every day, they would be shipping out between 8 to 10 boxes through FedEx.
29:43We'd get the search warrant, go down to the FedEx location, open those boxes,
29:49would hit them with the black light, would see that our initial markings were on those items,
29:53and now they had, you know, Michael Jordan's signature,
29:56all the members of the Chicago Bulls' signatures on those items.
29:59Eventually, we went back to SportsMart, and we wanted to wind this thing up.
30:04So they tell SportsMart to contact Tony and inform him he's a top buyer,
30:08which qualifies him for free delivery.
30:10Yeah, I bet. I ordered 500 basketballs for free delivery.
30:16Tony's free delivery order is placed, and Agent Walker suits up to go undercover.
30:21I go up to the SportsMart location.
30:25They allow me to use one of their vans,
30:28and I drive down to the Southside Warehouse with the merchandise in the van,
30:32and I make the delivery.
30:34For Tony, whose life of crime begins with the contact at the White Sox
30:37willing to sell him seats from a demolished Kominsky Park,
30:41the SportsMart delivery guy just seems like another good contact.
30:45So he delivered the 500 basketballs.
30:49I invited him in, told him what I do, said,
30:52Hey, if you can help me out any way possible, let's talk.
30:56They were showing me what was in there.
30:58They were describing how they obtained it through various sources
31:01with the Chicago Bulls, the Chicago White Sox.
31:05There was a large quantity of foreign sports memorabilia in that location,
31:10so I was able to document their story on tape.
31:13So what we had is a team of agents to execute the search warrant waiting, you know, blocks away.
31:22I was actually scheduled to go to Las Vegas for a trade show,
31:27and I left my garage, and an agent approached me.
31:33He flashed his credentials.
31:35Immediately recognized that Bob wasn't wearing his SportsMart delivery suit anymore,
31:39looked at both of us by his reaction, knew what was going on.
31:43He says, Hey, we need to talk.
31:45We talked, and that was the beginning of the end.
31:50You're never shocked because you're breaking the law.
31:54They brought me downtown.
31:56They put me in a room with the U.S. attorney.
31:58They said that your warehouse is being searched,
32:01and they said, We know exactly what you've been doing.
32:04We have surveillance photos.
32:06We have witness statements.
32:08We have complaints about what's been going on.
32:11It's your choice what you want to do.
32:13They threatened to take the house away.
32:15My grandmother was 80-something years old.
32:17I don't want to let her, the house was in her name.
32:19So there was a lot of leverage on me just to plead guilty, take my lumps.
32:24They'd leave everybody else alone, and I'd move on.
32:27And that's what I decided to do.
32:29But leaving everyone else alone does not extend to the other people involved in his criminal enterprise,
32:34starting with his network of distributors and retailers.
32:37With his assistance, what we were able to do is nail down that they, in fact,
32:41had knowledge that what they were distributing to the public, selling to the public, was fraudulent.
32:46At the end of the day, the most important element you need in any type of criminal conviction is the knowledge,
32:53the knowledge that that person knows that object is not authentic.
32:58So this is the authentic Michael Jordan signature,
33:01and this is a forgery of Michael Jordan's signature on this jersey.
33:05Some of the other examples of material we collected throughout the course of the investigation,
33:10this is a piece of the floor from the Chicago Stadium,
33:14on this piece of floor they forged a signature of Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen.
33:19This is a NBA Finals hat from the 1996 NBA Finals when the Bulls played the Seattle Sonics,
33:26and they forged Michael Jordan's signature on the brim of this hat.
33:31And you can't have a forgery ring without forgers.
33:34We had two more forgers.
33:36We had some pretty good evidence that they were the guys forging certain signatures on these items,
33:41but if we could get video of them engaged in this, that would be the icing on the cake.
33:49With the forgery mastermind now assisting the FBI,
33:52the Fed set up a signing session with two of Tony's forgers at a second warehouse in Des Plaines, Illinois,
33:57this time with the FBI secretly recording it all.
34:00So what we end up doing is we design a custom peephole camera.
34:06This is Special Agent Michael P. Bass, and I'm activating this audio recording device
34:10in approximately 12 minutes to 8 on July 2nd, 1996,
34:14for the purpose of essentially recording a meeting with John Schwartz.
34:19And when the forgers came for the next signing session, we activated the recording device.
34:25I've got to get these to Stutley, at least a dozen boxes there or something, because he's been...
34:31You've got to get them all today?
34:33No, not all of them. At least a box a day.
34:38They were sitting in there for hours. They were forging the Chicago Bulls,
34:42all the players' names on basketballs.
34:45You're selling these? You have them sold?
34:49They had cases and cases of basketballs in there.
34:52Jimmy, balls will get out when I get them out, I mean...
34:55The reading quality can't be crafted right now.
34:58All right.
35:00This guy, if he calls me more than a night, I'm throwing a phone through a wall.
35:04Come on, I never see you like this. Now settle down.
35:07What does he want?
35:09One of the forgers had six players' names, and one of the forgers was responsible for the other six players.
35:17I'm bringing... I'm painting it for my secret specialties.
35:21So they would sit next to each other, and one forger would sign his six players' names,
35:25throw the ball to the second forger,
35:27they'd put the remaining six names on it, and throw it in a box.
35:30And that went on for hours.
35:33We had all the evidence we needed regarding the forging side of this organization.
35:37Gentlemen, stand behind. Your hands right in the center, please.
35:40Take your hands out of your pockets, sir.
35:43Forgery of signatures is the most basic of all forgeries that can be done.
35:49And that's done through a little bit of education about how an athlete signs,
35:54and then working at it, working on your craft,
35:56like anybody who plays basketball will work on their left-handed layup.
36:01A forger is going to work on the skill it takes to go ahead and do that M, that J, the 23 look of it,
36:10in order to get a Jordan forgery.
36:12That's all it takes is just repetition.
36:15The whole world came tumbling on everybody.
36:18The FBI ended up arresting maybe 12 people after I went down.
36:24All of those people involved with that, and all the downstream retailers, pled guilty.
36:29Including Tony, the kingpin of a multi-million dollar operation.
36:33He pleads guilty to one count of mail fraud,
36:35and is charged with participating in a nationwide scheme to create and distribute fake sports memorabilia.
36:41He's now a pariah in the worldwide collectibles community.
36:45But his cooperation with the FBI keeps him out of jail.
36:49Alinovich realized the error of his ways at a time when he had other options.
36:53And still, as the judge noted today, stepped up to the plate immediately,
36:58and agreed to purge himself and cooperate.
37:04The judge made me start an account that I had to give money back to anybody
37:09who wanted their money back from the autographs.
37:12I had to give a 100% full refund.
37:15So I started making phone calls to all the people I dealt with.
37:18And I said, hey, I'm sure you heard I got in trouble.
37:20Those 300 Jordans I gave you are no good.
37:23Let me give you your money back.
37:25Nobody, and I mean not one person, asked for their money back.
37:30Everybody was happy with what they had.
37:33This investigation is just starting.
37:35This is the first step in it.
37:37We expect to see more charges, not only in the Chicago area,
37:40but other parts of the country.
37:42And we will pursue this as aggressively as we can.
37:46If there's an upside to Tony's criminal activity,
37:48it's that the memorabilia seized by the FBI in Operation Foul Ball
37:52is eventually put to good use.
37:54The investigation of the Chicago organization wound down.
37:58But what we had left was truckloads in our own warehouse
38:01full of all these raw materials that had been seized.
38:05The U.S. Attorney's Office is hoping to donate all the sports memorabilia
38:09to some needy kids who could make good use of the equipment.
38:12We would deface the forged signature with a stamp,
38:15and then we would distribute these items to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago.
38:20I couldn't tell you how many times, even though I'm under federal indictment,
38:23how many people still kept calling me wanting stuff.
38:26Well, just get me a couple hundred more.
38:28Just get me this. Just get me that. They didn't care.
38:31As the FBI delivers search warrants across the country,
38:34Tony's world begins to fall apart.
38:36My grandmother was outside, 88 years old, shooing away the news cameras
38:40because we had Channel 2, 5, 7, and 9 outside knocking on the door wanting to see me.
38:46It was not a good time.
38:48When you're the number one news story, it's nothing to be proud about.
38:51Needless to say, my mom and dad were very disappointed.
38:55You know, I had a lot of ridicule.
38:57I believe Operation Foul Ball was just such a groundbreaking investigation.
39:02It's because it was the first of its kind.
39:04I retired from the FBI as a special agent in 2008,
39:08and then came back as a contractor primarily for the FBI for 11 more years after that,
39:13and retired completely in 2019, and I'm retired now.
39:19Bassett was, I believe, the lead agent at the time.
39:24I have no hatred towards him because he basically saved my life.
39:29I look at it that I was so out of control
39:32that eventually I would have made the wrong deal, the wrong mistake.
39:35I would have ended up doing some serious prison time for either theft
39:40or I would have pissed off the wrong person and ended up getting killed.
39:44For almost 30 years, Tony has turned in the forger's pen for a hammer and nails.
39:48I'm a Union carpenter.
39:5027 years on, anybody who's out there and I hurt you, I apologize.
39:55I haven't broke the law in 30 years and have a legitimate job,
40:00great family, and I'm just moving on.
40:06All the time.
40:07I'll be at a shopping mall at the Mall of America,
40:11and I'm, ooh, there's one of my autographs.
40:13I was in Phoenix, Arizona in a bar, and they had a bunch of my basketballs up there.
40:18My stuff will be out there the rest of my life.
40:21I'm not proud about it.
40:23I'm not happy.
40:24If I can go back and change it and erase it all, I would.
40:28I'm under the strong belief that every case that we do in this marketplace
40:33is good for the hobby.
40:35It's good because anybody who's thinking of dabbling in this
40:39is going to know that there are real criminal penalties to be paid.
40:43Although Operation Foul Ball shuts down Tony's ring,
40:46experts say nearly half of the autographed sports memorabilia in circulation today is forged.
40:52When federal agents served a search warrant at Kennert's home,
40:55there they found a treasure trove of phonies,
40:58a collection valued at $7.3 million, all of them fakes.
41:02If it's too good to be true, it probably is.
41:05Since Brian's death, he's seen items with Kobe's signature
41:08selling on eBay for $5,000, $10,000, even $12,000.
41:12They're heartbroken when they find out that the piece is fake.
41:16And then every time they think of Kobe, they think they got screwed.
41:21Cleveland police investigators with the Financial Crimes Unit responded quickly
41:26and confiscated numerous boxes of evidence.
41:29The tail end of Operation Foul Ball, when we got the cooperation of a guy named James Studley,
41:34who was one of the retailers downstream from our criminal enterprise,
41:38he gave us an entree into an individual out on the West Coast
41:43who could provide forged Mickey Mantle baseballs.
41:51Operation Foul Ball is not the end of the FBI's investigation into sports memorabilia.
41:56From 1999 to 2006, Operation Bullpen brings down a California-based forgery ring
42:01that made and sold $100 million in forged sports memorabilia.
42:05I haven't signed a bet since 1985.
42:08Never once in a while I see them advertised.
42:10And I'm trying to figure out where they're getting them.
42:12Similar operation, large scale, doing sophisticated forgeries.
42:17And where one investigation did the more modern signatures,
42:21the other investigation was doing modern and vintage signatures.
42:25Operation Foul Ball led into Operation Bullpen through Robert Austin.
42:29The quantity of memorabilia we found in Austin's facilities was enormous.
42:36We got the cooperation of Major League Baseball, got some Bobby Brown baseballs.
42:40Bobby Brown was the president of the American League at the time when Mickey Mantle was still alive.
42:45When we were able to get those baseballs,
42:47the forger out on the West Coast had what he needed to forge the Mickey Mantle baseballs
42:51and send them back to us.
42:53That revealed itself as a much larger investigation than we would be able to keep in Chicago
42:59because it was on the West Coast.
43:01And so that spun into a California investigation that later became Operation Bullpen.
43:06The ultimate legacy of Operation Foul Ball, I think, was there's checks and balances,
43:11more checks and balances in place, but it's more of a buyer beware message that was sent out.
43:17Like, if you don't see the athletes signing the sports memorabilia,
43:21you know, there's a good chance that it might be forged.
43:24The forgers themselves are getting more sophisticated.
43:27They're learning. The world is an open resource.
43:30So as much as the authenticators are learning, the forgers are learning as well.
43:35The whole business is based on greed.
43:37There's really no other way to look at the business.
43:40I think the legacy is greed is bad, but everybody has it in them.
43:47The hardest part about all this is now I have an 11-year-old daughter.
43:50I got to go home and tell her about this now.
43:53I'm going to tell her who her father used to be, but I think more important of who her father is today.