I saw a fascinating story on the television about this guy named Wayne Bray, who partnered with Greg Marino to forge and sell millions of dollars worth of sports memorabilia, all engraved with fake signatures. He worked as an “Authenticator and Wholesaler” in San Marcos, California, selling the forgeries to hundreds of dealers.
The show is called Masterminds: Foul Ball. Most of it is an actor playing Bray, but he appears several times talking about what he did.
They said at his peak, he was passing off ten million dollars worth of counterfeits per month. By 1999, the FBI was on to him, and being cautious, he hired a former FBI agent to research if the FBI was actually on to him (he wasn’t sure). He found the answer was yes, so he decided to turn himself in.
I expected him to get life in prison, considering he’d been doing this five years and had made at least 100 million dollars. Then they said he got six months in custody (not even prison) and is still running his sports memorabilia shop, now legitimately. What?
It turns out he turned in everyone he knew. Dozens of people who bought goods off him like …
