News
BREAKING NEWS: Georgia man charged with forgery, theft of trading cards
A Georgia man has been arrested and charged with multiple counts of forgery and theft of trading cards and trading card materials.
Peter Friedrich Oberth, 44, of Cumming, Ga., was booked into the Forsyth County Jail on April 1.
According to the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office in Cumming, Oberth first got on the radar of authorities in July 2024 when an unnamed company in the trading card industry alerted them of a possible fraudulent scheme.
“In May 2024, Peter Oberth, a resident of Forsyth County, posted a [redacted] card on Facebook and has been taking offers on the card. Per [redacted], the card posted for sale by Mr. Oberth was not produced by [redacted] and they believe Mr. Oberth is misrepresenting facts about the card to interested individuals. Mr. Oberth is attempting to sell the card for several thousand dollars and [redacted] does not want a collector to purchase a fake card,” according to an incident report filed by the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office.
Oberth has been charged with one count of forgery in the first degree and one count of commerce: forging, counterfeiting trademarks, service marks.
Also in the same incident report, Oberth is charged with three counts of theft by deception. Three individuals—two in Georgia and one in Texas—came forward and claimed they were sold fraudulent items by Oberth.
In a separate incident report, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office was contacted by the owner of a printing company in Cumming, Ga., on March 11 of this year.
“While investigating another case involving the suspect Peter Oberth, I discovered he had a balance of over $67,000 at [redacted],” an officer of the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office reported. “I spoke with the owner, who informed me that Peter had been using his shop for printing services since September 2022 and would never pay according to terms.
“In March 2023, the balance accumulated was $10,000 and went up from there, until February 2024 when [the company owner] stopped printing orders because the balance due was $67,874.
“[The company owner] stated he never filed a police report, because he thought he could sue Peter for the amount due, but an asset search yielded that Peter had no money to pay that amount nor did he ever. [The company owner] reached out to a collection company, who would not even buy the debt from him based on a risk analysis of Peter Oberth. Based on prior instances of deceptive business tactics by Peter Oberth, an investigation was initiated.”
Oberth is charged with one count of theft of services.
The Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office director/public information officer Stacie Miller was not able to release any other records to Sports Collectors Digest since the case is pending in court.
INTERVIEW WITH OBERTH
Oberth—aka “Mini”— was a guest on Dave & Adam’s The Chase podcast last year and spoke about his business of making custom cards.
“I was just bored one day last year and decided to make a miniature 1952 Topps case, and that was the first one I made,” Oberth said on the podcast. “I posted it on Reddit and it seemed to get some good responses, so I just kept making different stuff.”
Oberth said he made the miniature 1952 Topps case in January 2023. He posted it online and Reddit and Facebook users got in touch with him.
“I started to get a lot of DMs from people wanting to buy it or wanting to have custom work done for them, which some I did and some I didn’t,” Oberth said.
Making that first custom item really opened Oberth’s mind to think about other possible items he could create.
“I’ve always been into design since I was a kid in the early days of PaintShop Pro and earlier days of Photoshop, and in the early ’90s I got into stuff,” Oberth said. “By the time I was in high school, I started teaching my own graphics class in school during my study period. I just loved doing different designs and stuff. I won’t name names but there are a lot of brands in the hobby that get a little stale and redundant with stuff and derivative, so I just wanted to try doing some more elaborate things that I maybe haven’t seen before.”
When asked by one of the podcast hosts if he was creating custom cards now as a full-time job, Oberth said he is involved in a number of businesses. Oberth noted he and his wife run Lost Posters, a web design company.
“We have another company where we design album covers and posters and stuff like that and we film and edit music videos and stuff,” Oberth said. “It’s just branching off of that, and this just became a hobby and it’s taken off pretty well.”
Prior to his appearance on The Chase podcast, Oberth had mailed the hosts a number of items he had made that they could have. They included a Michael Jordan rookie card as if he appeared in 1984 Fleer Baseball design as well as some Pokémon cards and boxes.
“I just have piles of stuff, and a lot of stuff I’ve made I was just experimenting and stuff. So, I didn’t have a buyer and I’m not big on searching out buyers, posting stuff for sale,” Oberth said.
Oberth used to have company pages on eBay, Instagram and YouTube, but they no longer exist. Oberth still has his company website and an Etsy page where he is actively selling items.
