BREAKING NEWS: Forgery suspects arrested in major sports memorabilia fraud case

Dubbed the “biggest threat to our industry” 4 ½ years ago by a prominent business owner in the sports memorabilia field, a long-suspected forger and his alleged accomplice are now behind bars.

Wendell Gidden-Rogers and Lisa Skolnick, both of McKinney, Texas, were arrested on Wednesday when investigators with the Collin County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division executed a search warrant.

SCD Investigation: Forger ‘biggest threat to industry’

According to a press release from the Collin County Sheriff’s Office, “The warrant was obtained as part of an ongoing investigation into the online sale of fraudulently manufactured and authenticated sports memorabilia.”

Sports Collectors Digest published a story in December 2020 after a months-long investigation into Wendell Rogers, which is one of his many aliases. According to the report, a number of businesses that deal in sports memorabilia—including Mill Creek Sports in Mill Creek, Wash.—reported being duped by fake memorabilia Rogers was allegedly selling out of his McKinney house.

“He wasn’t forging items then trying to pass it through third-parties, the JSAs, the PSAs, Beckett,” owner Scott Mahlum told SCD back in 2020. “What he would do is forge companies that produced the items. He took it to the next level. And he was so sophisticated enough that he would go into a company’s database for a player’s mini helmets and find the serial number and then he would go print that same serial number for a real one, and he’d print it onto these holograms and put it onto a fake item. We hadn’t seen that before to that level.”

Pictures taken by the Collin County Sheriff’s Department from inside Gidden-Rogers’ McKinney residence on Wedneday show thousands of items with forged signatures and totes filled with fake company certification stickers and sheets of holograms.

“There’s some bins and my guess is those are all the different holograms from the different companies,” Mahlum told SCD on Thursday. 

SCD Investigation Part 2: Forgery the bane of the hobby 

More photos, courtesy of the Collin County Sheriff’s Department, show the massive extent of the forging operation. There are hundreds of NFL footballs allegedly loaded with fake signatures from such legends as Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Walter Payton and Bart Starr; NFL jerseys stacked up ready to be signed; full-size and mini NFL helmets; NBA basketballs with autographs of Michael Jordan, who is known to be the most forged professional athlete of all time; and MLB helmets and baseballs with forged signatures. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“During the search, investigators uncovered a significant amount of evidence supporting the investigation,” said the Collin County Sheriff’s Department. “This included fictitious certificates of authentication and thousands of sports memorabilia items that were falsely represented as genuine.”

One extremely incriminating item amongst all the fake memorabilia and associated accessories was a Ghostwriter autopen machine sitting on a table. Next to it are pens in a variety of colors. The Ghostwriter machine can be programmed to sign a player’s name in a specific size. That certainly makes it easy for forgers to autograph hundreds of items in no time.

“[Gidden-Rogers] probably has a way to scan real autographs and then put it into that machine,” Mahlum said.

Gidden-Rogers and Skolnick were charged with trademark counterfeiting, $30,000-$150,000, which is a third-degree felony under Texas law.

“My best guess would be [Giddens-Rogers] sold in the last 10 years upwards of $30 to $60 million worth of stuff,” Mahlum said.

Also See: Fraud, forgeries still on the race 

ENCOURAGING NEWS

When Mahlum found out on Thursday that Gidden-Rogers had been arrested, he was excited. It’s news he’s been waiting to hear for a long time.

“It’s still frustrating that it took the better part of 10 years,” Mahlum said. “I hope they dive into his records and see the amount that he totally has done in 10 to 12 years. It’s going to be scary. It’s going to be eye-opening.”

What does this large of a bust mean to the hobby?

“I hope it sends a message there’s a lot of other guys that are doing this, too,” Mahlum said. “My opinion is we won’t know what it does until we find out sentencing and see if anything actually happens to the guy.”

More Fraud and Forgery: Operation Bullpen revisited