librarypunk - 097 - Scam Time - John Rogers and collectable photographs

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

This week we’re talking about John Rogers, a memorabilia mogul who flew too close to the sun (fueled by cocaine) by buying up newspaper photo collections and promising digital archives in return, while flogging the rarest photos for a profit. A warning to libraries and museums to be careful when a new digitization scheme rides into town! https://defector.com/he-said-he-was-going-to-save-a-century-of-priceless-sports-photos-he-ended-up-the-madoff-of-memorabilia  Media mentioned https://www.cnet.com/tech/openai-sued-by-authors-alleging-chatgpt-trained-on-their-writing/ https://bookriot.com/hoopla-overdrive-libby-now-banned-for-those-under-18-in-mississippi/  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point (Teilhard’s idea) https://www.polygon.com/23779892/mtg-the-one-ring-found-how-much-price-spain

Hello. Just deep little too big for my teeth. I've got a small mouth. If only you didn't have all these teeth in the way. I know, but they don't all have these teeth in the way. Suck a golf ball through this thing. Jesus. It should be able to do a golf ball now, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Skill issue. Working your way up to, yeah, working your way up to tennis ball. I do not have to. have a skill issue. Don't worry. Sorry, I've got, I'm running on four hours of sleep here. I'm Justin, I'm a Skalkanl-Library. My pronouns are he and they. I'm Sadie. I work at a public library and my pronouns are they them. And I'm Jay. I am a music librarian. My pronouns are he,

him. And I've got an actual real microphone finally. Bam-p-p-pah-bam. Do I sound beautiful and hot and lovely? You always do, Jay. Yeah, but now you're, now I notice that you're, you're tempted to get real close to the mic. Yeah. So you finally have mic discipline. It's probably going to fix a lot of the problems in the first place. Yeah. I just want to sound hot.

That's like my number one goal in life. So as long as that's okay, then everyone else. The hottest sounding bitch in the grocery store. I have to be the most fuckable person in the grocery store. Listen, like, this is true about me. That's not even an insult. That's just, that's just, that's just, that's just the, them's the facts. It's just facts.

But is, is this close enough? Am I too close? Yeah, you're good. This is my first time. I don't know how to do it. As long as you're not peaking it, it'll be fine. Okay, I'll try not to be myself. Try not to yell straight into it when you're right in front of it.

Yeah. Do the like when you have to hit a real high note and you have to put the mic real far away from you. Kind of thing. So you don't pee. Yeah. Yeah, I went to a student's recital. And she is like a train of. opera singer so she knows that to fucking fill a space without amplification. But she was singing a song

that wasn't like in classical style. She was actually singing something from a musical, which then required amplification. And the sound people were not prepared to be able to adjust the microphone for someone who knows how to sing opera into a microphone because it just went like peaked and you could see her like trying to adjust it. I was like, God bless. Because she's got a lovely voice, right? Very powerful because, again, opera. But this wasn't opera, but that doesn't mean she ain't got the vocal power.

She got pipes. Yeah, you would think with the fact that my dad's a musician and I like grew up in recording studios that I would not be as much of a bitch idiot about all of this. It did not rub off. Speaking of bitch idiots. Yeah. Open AI sued. by authors alleging chat GPT trained on their writing.

It was by novelists Paul Trimbley and Mona. He's a horror writer, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so there's nothing on this yet. It's just sort of, they're arguing that it's probably trained on like Syhub and Libgen, which I don't know if that's actually plausible, but could be. That might be in the training data.

It depends just like who built the training set. Yeah. I still continue to wonder if attacking this actual threat to the industry from a copyright perspective is the correct way to go. It's got to get resolved one way or the other. Yeah, still, you know, smash the looms, you know. I really feel like the Oracle and the Google Books case are like pretty clear that if it's transformative, that it's fair use.

Yeah. So I've had to read those cases in depth. And it's like, that's kind of the main thing is like, if it's putting. out, if it's not just pumping out like what it ingested, then it's, if it's not just plagiarism, yeah, then it's, yeah. So I'm like, this is not the best angle of attack. We should be attacking, but I don't think anything that would seek to strengthen IP law is the right way to go. Yeah, I don't necessarily think the Google case is a bad one. No, I think it's a good one. I think transformative uses should be fair use, but I agree.

This is like, this is also like when you're, when you end up siding with like the tech industry, like it causes other problems. Yeah. And you're like, yeah, Google should win this case. It's like, yeah. It's like they should, but like I don't, I don't want them to. But it's like I, what they're what the case is about, I want them to win, but I don't want them to win, you know. It's like Disney versus DeSantis or whatever. It's like, I don't want to be rooting for Disney, but I have to root for Disney.

What's that fucking meme from the shitty Star Wars movie? I don't want him to win. I just like, I don't want them to win. I just need him to lose or whatever. Yeah. Well, there's the Alien versus Predator, whoever wins we lose poster. Yeah, that too.

So yeah, that's part of it. Also, I saw that the FTC opened an investigation and OpenAI right after this. I don't know if they were already going to do that or if this lawsuit has prompted them to. That's actually good. Yeah. And isn't there like multiple shenanigans with Open AI in like the European Union and like, privacy stuff. Yeah, they have basically been doing the whole going around scaring people and saying, we need to let us regulate ourselves. You need to give us a license to run AIs. Or else the basalisk will

kill us. Yeah. You'll know what the basilisk gives. Roko's Basilisk, right? Yeah. Do you know about Rokos? It's stupid. Yeah, it's a stupid thought argument that like AI will advance so much in the future that this supreme being or whatever, this basilisk will come through and then like kill all like back in time or something like the people recreate you. Yeah, it will like recreate you and then like kill you because you hadn't supported it ahead of time or something. And so it's like a thought experiment of like we should support AI because what if the basilisk happens? And I'm like the basilisk isn't real. Yeah, that's kind of the point of the past. Bascalis. And it's like turned into like a fucking death cult like with like

AGI and like everything like it's like turned into like a cult like an online cult. Like really like radicalizing people. Rokos Bascois. Okay. I've got the Wikipedia pulled up. Yeah. It's like radicalizing people like weirdos. Yeah. The weird thing is they just took the concept of like modern sort of evolution like Tyler Desjardine sort of had this theory of God that like God exists in the future. right? And then has retroactive power over the past. So like human consciousness is like atomic to the world. And humans will get more conscious. Humans will get then hive minded and then universal minded. And that will create God. And then God will retroactively have power throughout the universe and then cause itself. Right. And instead they added like. So you might as well believe. Well, yeah. It was kind of like trying to give like a naturalistic like argument for the plausibility of God, I think was his, his argument. But this is the same thing.

But then what if that God hated you? And it just added that off. And it's like, it has no reason to hate me. I for one welcome the basilist. Let him wreck our shit. I don't care. Fucking. There's a character and questionable content who is a cop.

And her name is Rocco Basilisk. Are you serious? That's pretty good. I'm sorry. People reported symptoms such as nightmares and mental breakdowns upon reading the theory due to its stipulation that knowing about the theory and its and its bascalis made one vulnerable to the bascalist itself. Like that sounds like massacist.

That's why it's a basilisk because when basilists see you, you turn to stone. Right. So even just seeing. This discussion led up the battle, this led to discussion of the bascalist being on the site being banned for five years. What the fuck? A fucking death cult. Yay.

These like AI weirdos have been like cooking behind. the scenes and not a lot of people know about these AI weirdos. Like the mainstream doesn't know about these AI weirdos, but they're out there. There's a weirdos about everything, man. I want to fuck the basilis. I don't know. RIP to them, but I'm different. Anyway, sorry, Justin.

I sent us on that tangent. No, it's fine. In further news, I just wanted to cover the intro sentence because it was pretty catty because it's book riot. Despite the age of consent and Mississippi being 16. No one under the age of 18 will have access to digital materials made available through public and school libraries without explicit parental guardian permission.

So yeah, you can't access hoopla or overdrive or Libby in Mississippi without parental consent. Shit, shit sucks. Yeah. This is, is it Brooklyn, is a Brooklyn public library, New York public library that's giving out cards for free to literally anybody who's under 18 to their digital collection? Stop doing that? I think they restarted. Okay. Because I still see it going around.

I think one of the library systems around here did it too. They might be like SPL or King County or something. The basilisk may have done me. I think SPL or some maybe even a system in California also was offering access to either students of all of California. I don't know how the agreement with the vendors goes with this, but. Well, that's, I mean, isn't that the whole crooks of the problem is that there is no good way for anybody to actually like regulate this, which is why they're just pulling access altogether. That was my understanding. I mean, they're pulling access because they don't want anyone to read any books about weird people.

And there's no way to set parental controls individually with these systems because like, why would there be? It's not your fucking cable box at home. It's not how that works. I've been saving more news for like a news roundup So maybe next week we go through news round up Yeah, because the fucking Montana thing There's a lot of things Yeah, Montana's in there

Some other stuff I think I got Kentucky this time Maybe Iowa That was the news So I've been looking for a scam Ever since we saw that heist film Which I forgot about when I was listing out the films That we've seen on Blue Sky

By the way, we're on Blue Sky now Library Punk on Blue Sky But we watched that one where they were trying to do a heist of like a really big painting or something. American animals. American animals. Yeah. The books with the Audubons.

Audubon, yeah. So I've been looking for like a heist kind of story. And this one, and I wanted to get to one that like Lie Cheat and Steel hasn't done yet. And this one is pretty interesting because it starts off as kind of a, well, the subject of our story is a man named John Rogers, who grew up. I want to say in the 70s and 80s during sort of the rise in baseball cards becoming collector's items and having like really large value. I mean, there were already some that were like highly valued. But this was like where collecting and more and more collecting was becoming like a business. He's just obsessed with them.

So he runs like a memorabilia shop. So he trades, you know, sports memorabilia, obviously cards, things like that. he talks about wanting to have this like extremely rare baseball card um his whole life and then he finally at one point in the story gets it but he's so like obsessed with just doing deals that he sells it for a loss like six months later like this lifetime goal of his so this is a guy who's like can't help himself it's a very good scam story because it's a guy who just can't stop the scam and it ruins it is involved cocaine is involved my favorite line in this is he blamed his ruinous to Grace on his three preferred vices.

Greed hubris and cocaine. Me too, brother. Yeah, that's why greed and hubris are in there and I feel like he could have pulled this off without cocaine too. It just didn't help, I think. Yeah. But what makes this sort of like a library story is, so he starts up this, I want to get the year.

So he's born in 73. So he's not that old. He's early 50s. He wants the T-206 Honus Wagner card. and he sees it when he's a child. And when he's in high school, he gets used to just sort of hustling and doing all that. And he eventually liquidates some family money or something and opens a store.

And he is, let's see, the launch of the Beckett Baseball Card Monthly magazine in the early 1980s and the authentication and grading system, which is like a huge thing now with collectibles. Emphasized valuation condition. So, like, people, if you watch, like, card openers, they're like, oh, I'm going to send this off to get graded. I'm going to send this off to get graded. Because, like, basically, you get it graded, like, immediately on taking out of the pack now. And you're like, that's the grade and it's weighed and everything. And it's, uh, and then you just like, don't touch it.

And now it's like an investment. Um, so you don't even wait for things to get old. So, like, right now in Magic the Gathering, they printed 30, like, 3 million packs or 30 million packs. And one pack will have one card in it. And so everyone's, like, waiting to see if someone will find it. find it. And someone has already said, if you find it, we'll pay like $2 million for it. Jesus Christ. And this is all just like how magic runs its business now. Like, it's just like, we're going to make something super rare and people are going to go nuts for it because it'll be a

collectible and it's people are weird consumers now. This seems sort of reminiscent of Beanie Babies. Yeah. It's Beanie Babies for boys. Yeah. For nerds. Yeah. Well, more like men because usually it's a lot of money. Yeah, it's beanie babies for men. That's what this is. Although I do remember when I bought my first packs of Pokemon cards at the flea market, the guy selling it was like, you know, you got to hang on to these because they're going to be worth a lot one day. I'm like, everyone says that about Beanie babies.

It won't be true. And I'm like, man, if I find those Pokemon cards, I could sell them for like a couple thousand dollars. I could find those first edition Pokemon cards. Yeah. But anyway, in the 90s, he sells vintage baseball jerseys. World Series rings, Elvis Presley's jukebox. And then in 2002, he pays $50,000 for the archives of Don Wingfield, a freelance photographer who shot for the Sporting News, Tops and the Washington Senators. And it uses pictures to produce postcard sets in the 50s and 60s.

John Rogers is not a photography person. He's a collectibles person. So he just kind of buys these things and he realizes like, oh, these photos are really, really rare. I can sell prints of them and I can sell the photos themselves as collectibles. And he's also going to speculate on the future value of these archives. So what happens is 2008, the financial crisis happens. Print journalism is in trouble because of the internet. Newspapers are losing cash.

And so he starts offering to buy up the negatives and prints that they have in their storage because a lot of the corporate archivists are also leaving the field. They're retiring because they're not hiring new archivists, so they're not maintaining their institutional knowledge anymore. So there's no more desk set room of ladies. There's nobody there. And they're like, well, we've got all these negatives. What are we going to do?

And some guy goes, I'll give you $50,000 or $100,000 for it. And so that's how he kind of gets really into this game. It's interesting, though, what he would do is he would buy the original prints. So I guess like he would buy them for 50,000, 100,000. They would take them away. They would digitize them, add metadata, and then give the database back to the original owner. So he would almost immediately offload the rarest stuff to make up for the costs. So he would offload like a negative of Mickey Mantle and the nude that reportedly sold for $25,000 like that.

So he could just sell them on eBay or whatever. and he would send the newspaper a digital collection. And then if he got the copyright, then he would do prints or he could license them to ESPN and HBO. So then he's like, okay, well, we got to keep going. So then he gets the Denver Post, Boston Herald, Seattle Times, Chicago Sun-Times, St. Petersburg Times. And as you might know, that's a lot of processing to do. That's so much. Yeah.

The first thing I'm thinking is like, okay, I've made the decision to sell on the, on the argument that I'm going to get this database back. That's a big leap of faith that like the database is going to be worth anything. Right. Yeah. Or useful. What happened was the first few ones were actually pretty good. And then they vouched for him to other newspapers. And then those other newspapers got screwed over.

So. It's a pretty classic con artist shit, though, I think. Yeah, it's also very similar to like the kind of deals the library could get itself into today. Like, I could see you falling, like anyone falling for this. I kind of want to talk about that at the end. It's like how libraries might fall for this today. Because this wasn't that long ago. He, I think he got arrested and charged in 2017.

King. So he basically, like I said, they would get them in. But as soon as he got like all of these things, he was immediately pulling out like the best ones, even before they made the digital copies. And then he would sell them, I guess, before they make the digital copies in some cases. That's not really clear from the article. But it says someone who used to work for him said, like it was a nightmare working for him. He'd make very public purchases and very private sales.

So stuff would just get sold really quick. And then I'm not sure if that meant they had to go track him down and like grab the photo off of him and then like scan it. Or if I think at one point they said like there was. was a there was just like a packet of like a couple hundred negatives or something that he had just like picked out of different collections. Yeah, it sounded like they like he wasn't actually caring at all whether or not it was actually all like archived properly. It was like, I just want to get this shit in so I can turn around and sell it and, you know, fuck whatever archive. It's not like they're going to, you know what I mean? They're not going to like go through and make sure every single photograph they hand it over.

is there. But then again, they'll probably notice the really famous one. So I think he just didn't give a shit. Yeah. And actually, when he first got the attention of the FBI when he bought that T206 Honus Wagner card, because he threw a party to celebrate buying it for $1.62 million. And people thought, like, they were celebrating like a new child, like local politicians and stuff were coming by. Congrats on your bundle of joy. Yeah. They thought they were having a child named Honus, Honus Wagner. Revived that. Yeah. Honest is a good name.

So that's why FBI paid attention because usually collectors, when they purchase something high value, they stay anonymous. And instead, he's throwing a party, which is something most people don't do. Months after the auction, he offered the card on eBay for $2.5 million, didn't sell. So he purportedly dumped it for a $600,000 loss in early 2009. So he only hung on for it for a few months. He found publishers lining up to sit. So he has a friend who turns them on to like photographs. And then I'm trying to find.

So yeah, he paid 500,000 to digitize Denver Post's archive of approximately two million photographs. Half a million dollars was a significant boost for us. We were able to take the old images and bring them back to circulation as digital versions. He keeps the things. So he has a climate control facility in Little North Rock in Memphis, A small army of archivists sorted and processed the photographs of negative cleaning, erasing edits, repairing, Terry, scanning them front and back, minimum resolution of 300 dots per inch. They outsourced processing metadata to India and Bangladesh.

And then the cache would then go back. Then the digital would go back to the paper. And if they still had the copyright, then the paper would start selling the pictures. And that also meant that photographers were still getting royalties on those sales too. So it's kind of a great deal for the early people. Or at least they thought it was. He was probably making out a lot more money, selling some of the individual ones. The guy from Los Angeles Daily News was talked in by one of these early ones.

So he deliberately held back particularly prized photos from the O.J. Simpson trial and the LA riots, just to see, like, you know, just to make sure that they have the most valuable stuff. Seven figure checks, because I kind of wanted to get to, like, how many people he was hiring. So it just says, like, an army of archivists. Right. But he's like in the news as like preserving America's sports history. Like people who like really love this. Like he's digitizing everything. He's giving that back to the paper as part of the deal.

And then he's, you know, selling on the rest as collectibles. So he gets this. Oh, he buys the sporting news in 2007 and include an archive of 600,000 photo prints and negatives. And 8,354 original negative shot by Charles Conlon. who was an early baseball photographer. So these are sort of very, very highly sought after photos and moments in history. And he was sort of a household name because of this book that came out with some of his photos. Now Rogers owns his life's work.

And it's in pretty good condition. He says they had to do a lot to it. But actually, it's like, no, it was in good condition. It was appraised at 8.4 million just months after the purchase. So he bought it. Does it say how much he bought it for? No, it doesn't. So I don't know how much.

But, like, immediately, it's the Conlin stuff is worth millions. So he's selling them off with individual prints. Wasn't that the collection that he claimed to somebody that, like, it was, like, buried under moldy cardboard and had to, like, dig out of this closet and all this stuff? And then his business partner at the time says, no, they had it, like, in an office. like in archival boxes perfectly organized for him. Like, I don't know. I don't know why he's telling people that. Yeah, he's just like a habitual liar.

He's a flim flammer. He just like starts a story and just sees where it takes him, I think. It's like, just join an improv group, my dude. But the next one is the one I didn't want to get out of order. So then acquiring the George Brace archive, In 1929, photographer George Spray started shooting the Cubs at Wrigley and the White Sox at Kamiski, as well as visiting teams going through Chicago. I can't believe you haven't made the baseball player joke once yet. Well, because I know who I'm saying. You should do that to me.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Brace died in 2002, leaving the archive to his family and his daughters, Mary and Kathleen kept the business going. But buying the paper in darkroom supplies was increasingly prohibited. Kathleen died, so his daughter. And then Mary and her niece, Deborah Miller, decided to digitize the collection. They bought an expensive scanner but gave up. They said it would take them 15 years to finish it.

So Rogers, I guess, knows them. He previously ordered prints from her. And he swoops in and says, I'm going to pay $1.35 million for the collection and copyright, with an upfront payment of $500,000 to be followed by 10 annual payments. So he doesn't pay all at once. And he also promised to deliver a complete digital archive for the family's use. So the most important thing was like keeping it intact. And she gets like a verbal agreement from Rogers that they're going to keep it all together.

And obviously not because he immediately picks out the rare photographs and sells him an auction. That's what he does. So she received the initial $500,000 payment from Rogers. She was supposed to receive $85,000 annually over the next decade, but the payment stopped after one year. Rogers also failed to provide her with a complete digital copy of the brace. collection as he had promised. I was supposed to retire with the money. She said, that's why I made the deal for 10 years. So it was something to live on that ever came about. And I think she's testifying after the point where he's like done. He's cooked. So she's not getting that money.

But that's like way at the bottom of the article after they introduce her. But I did want to get to her story because that one was pretty bad. Yeah. Like she's one of a very long list at the end of that article of people who were owed money by this guy through loans or broken contracts or or fake memorabilia. He faked a lot of shit, too. It wasn't just like turning around and selling stuff that was actually good, like, worth something. He was he was faking shit too.

Yeah, I think he was making forgeries to, it sounded like it was, the forgeries were not to sell, but to entice people to donate to his collection, be like, look, I'm taking care of these. Although there is one where I think it said he trimmed it or something to make it look like it was in better condition than it was before selling it, so it would up the grading. His reputation so high that he's no longer paying six or seven figures for it. They were handing that for newspaper photo archives. They were handing them over practically gratis in exchange for the digitization services.

So this is the part where I'm like, okay, this is starting to sound like something a library would do. It's just like, we'll pay you to do the thing instead of you paying us for the thing that you're getting something out of. So he says, we took on too much digitization work. The cost outweighed the revenue. no shit. You know, we're creating new revenue streams and I believe fully we'll pull out of this. I don't know. I didn't make a note of when he said that. He said that after he had been

arrested. I finished reading this article earlier today and got to that part where he's still making promises after he's like arrested and waiting to be sentenced to shit. They also promised that they scan the images at a certain DPI. So I think it was a 300 DPI minimum. They scanned them at 200 DPI and then converted it to 600 DPI, so they just converted the files. So you just got this shitty blurry photo. Yeah, it's like, that's not... That was just funny to me. I'm like, what?

Why? Like, it doesn't take that much more time unless you're using cheap scanners or something, but he's presumably already has like really expensive scanners. So I don't, maybe he outsourced some of the scans or something to someone with an iPhone or something. But yeah, he worked good for early clients and who then vouched for him and he was monetizing. So that brings me to thinking about like discussions I've had with our office of tech commercialization, where they're like, have you got a collection in the library that we could turn into a database

and then like lease access to, you know, like a maps collection or GIS collection or something like that? It's like that like ProQuest can sell, right? My job's all about making this stuff free. It's like half a ProQuest shit is just like archives that they've scanned and they've made proprietary. Yeah, we're actually, weirdly enough today, I got an email that one of our already digitized and already openly available things is collections. J. Store is interested in. So we're going to let J.Store copy those over and put them in an open access collection.

But like the copyright's not transferring or anything. It's just like, you can use our scans. and you can put it in this open access collection, because we already have it available open access. So that's sort of like our introduction. But then the question is like, if this goes on, are they going to give us like some money to digitize

the rest of these collections that they're interested in? Or are we going to have to pay them or what's going to happen? So I'm keeping an eye on like, I'm curious as to like who would pay for it if they wanted to see the rest of these non-digitized collections of these like rare newspapers we have. They're like union newspapers from, the 60s and 70s.

Nice. By the way, hell yeah, support the writers and actors strike, solidarity forever. That's right, boys.

Mondo Kuh. Hot Strike Summer, baby. Let's fucking go. It is hot. They're on strike. But yeah, this is the first time in

what, 60 years? They both been on strike at the same time? The last time they did at Ronald Reagan was the president of SAG. Nice.

Jesus Christ. And now the nanny for Andrew Scher. It is. Yeah. So going back to Rogers, it all starts to, like, fall apart for him. He's like bouncing checks left and right. People are like, where are you getting money from?

How are you getting money? How is the income happening? How are you paying for like New York City condo and a mortgage on a McMansion? The FBI was sort of already investigating the memorabilia market going on from the 90s. Yeah. The auction house he bought it from, the T-206 horse. Wagner card, that auction house was like shut down for phony and altered memorabilia. And then, oh, yeah, so his business partner is working with the, with the feds and because of

the fraud at the auction house. And he's talking to Rogers. And Rogers is also working with the feds. And Rogers baits him, the other guy, Alan, into confessing he was wearing a wire, which means his, the FBI was like, well, you admitted you're wearing a wire. This is useless now. So Alan lost his chance at a reduced sentence and went to prison for 57 months. And Roger said, yeah, I just wanted to screw him over.

Yeah, you're wearing a wire. I'm wearing a wire. So I don't even know if they were both wearing a wire, but he was already working with the FBI. No, no, it says that he, he knew that he was double agenting. So he wore a wire and recorded the conversation of the other video. Oh, okay. Yeah. Right, right, right. My favorite part of this story is when he realized that this guy was basically playing double agent and had told him that the FBI was planning on reading his businesses and his home.

They're at a restaurant. His business partner goes to the bathroom. He grabs the guy's phone, finds the FBI agent's number and calls him. Like the sheer balls on him to be like, I know you're raiding my house. Like, I know you're coming. Don't hurt my dogs or my family. like he's playing double agent bye and then when they did raid his shit

he had like for one he knew they were coming so he had everything cleaned up but he had they found a notebook with a bunch of practices of forged signatures including one in the script of Babe Ruth that was addressed to the FBI agent yeah to my pal Brian the finest FBI agent king shit

king shit that dude had balls and cocaine Yeah, cocaine helps. I'd let him hit, you know. Jay, have some dignity. No. That's the thing about these. That's the thing about these con stories is like people who pull them off are really like affable people.

They're really magnetic personalities. But he's also like vindictive, right? And he's screwing over a lot of people. He screwed that lady out of her retirement. An old lady. Like she was old. Her sister died. it. But people like him, right?

You know, right up to the end, they're like, well, he's a fun hang, you know. The Babe Ruth fake signature of the FBI, like, hello, Mr. Policeman. It's like, yeah, the fucking snowman. Hello, Mr. Police. I left you all the clues. Yeah. And so once they start doing forensic accounting of his financial records, this then unleashes a tsunami of lawsuits that exposed a,

scams, unpaid loans, and fraudulent collateral. So basic sort of investor bullshit. I think that was why some of the fabricated memorabilia was there. It was collateral. Maybe I got that wrong. And the scans, the thing he gave me, were a couple hundred photos, she said. Mary Brace, the woman who didn't get her payout. He just got a couple hundred random photos, not the whole collection.

So then his wife sues for divorce. She gets full ownership of like the business. Couples home and other properties at 2012 Mercedes, custody of the three children, who were all teenagers, was sold later out of foreclosure. Not the teenagers of the house. Skeptics view the divorce is a move to protect assets from creditors, which I believe it. It's so bad. You'd be like, babe, we got to, I'll be out in 50 months.

I love it. And like, this is a guy who knows this. to stash money somewhere, right? So he's like, okay, check this bank account, check this bank account, check this bank account. Don't tell anyone where they are. So good. And the thing that one of the other things that got me about this is hold on. Let me find it in the actual article is when they had confiscated all of the shit.

And then they hired somebody to start to like sell it off to cover all of the debts and everything. And somebody contacted that guy and made like three separate offers trying to get certain things out of it. But if you traced, they traced it back and like the guy who was the CEO of that company or like who was the president of that company was also the CEO of the parent company that owned like a different auction house that he had like bought and sold a bunch of stuff. So it was very much like clearly like an insider job trying to get all of these materials like back and in a safe place. So when he came back out, he still had them. Which like is also a bold move. It might be at the very, very end because I'm forgetting that. I think it's at the

very end. Yeah. Let's see. Red alert. Yeah. He was he was selling people the same thing for different prices and different interests in like the collection. Yeah, Red Alert and its CEO, Timothy Hawley, by the entirety of the receivership's asset except for the Conlon Collection, made three different authors that were rejected by court. Oh yeah, he hasn't abandoned the business even though he sits in prison. There's a website for Regal Photo Archive, which is very clearly an act or a front for the Rogers photo archive, which is what he had, what he called it before. And they claim to own all of the same exact collections. Let's see. Recent legal listing describes Regal as a subsidiary. So Regal as a subsidiary of El Dorado, which also owns

Red Media Alert, who are the ones who tried to buy back everything. El Dorado is Timothy Holly, who is also the president of Red Alert Media. So it's like clearly this one dude who he's friends with is trying to buy all of his shit back. So he still has it when he gets out of prison. Yeah. Yeah. He also, it's also interesting how he gets nabbed the second time.

So he's on, he's out on bail or something. And he decides to go steal. And he has to stay away from his former business. He goes to the North Little Rock one and takes three, five terabyte hard drives with over one million scans, including the metadata that he claimed to own. And so he gets.

He snapped on burglary charges for that. So he's like, what? Stealing from myself? What? But he literally was not allowed to go back to the business. So I don't know what his plan was for those photos, but obviously he got caught right away. He was selling counterfeit items, including a fake commemorative football from the first Super Bowl. He revoked Rogers Bond and ordered him held at Chicago's correctional center until sentencing.

So he's just like doing crimes the whole time. He's like out on bond. eight-year prison term was boosted to nearly 12 years. He is expected to get out in 2027, followed by three years of supervision, which I assume during which three years he will be buying and sell and stuff and then right back into jail. It doesn't seem like he can stop himself. It's a toss-up whether it'll be the cocaine or the thievery that happens first. But they're both definitely going to happen again. Well, he's going to have to do thievery to get the cocaine.

Or maybe he needs cocaine to get the balls to do the theory again. And then it's an urburos and then maybe he just gets like, you know, decision paralysis and can't move forward at all. It would only be better if his wife could, yeah, it would only be better if his wife could divorce him again. Right. Like, what if they like got married again and then divorced? And then divorced and then she took whatever shit he had acquired since then. Right.

And we continue in perpetuity. and that's what being heterosexual is. Yep. The thing that gets me the most about this whole story is just it's such a goddamn shame. Because I think somebody says it, if he would have just not been like hyper-focused on the thrill of the deal and actually done what he had told people he was going to fucking do with these archives, he could have continued to like make decent money and have done something good for the world. but no, it was cocaine and greed and hubris and nothing else.

This is what unmanaged ADHD does to a motherfucker. He's self-treating with cocaine. Yeah, self-treating with cocaine. Jesus. I was like, I'm like, hmm, hmm. Oh, no. That's why it sounded familiar. I was like, it's okay, King.

Let's get you some concerta. Yeah. I don't think he's going to be allowed in your stimulants for a long time. No. Yeah. I hope not. But like it's one of those like Adele we could have had at all moments, right? Like reading this thinking about like the archive that could have come out of this and the public.

That's pretty cool. That could have come out of this. And it didn't because this one man just had to chase something. Yeah. It could have been like a like a for-profit DPLA or like. you know, J store kind of situation. So DPLA.

I'm just kidding. Is DPL for profit? I just never remember. No, no, no, I was joking. I was making a stupid joke.

I don't think it's for profit. No, it can't be. And like, Mary Brace is really like, to me, the like true victim of this because she kept such

meticulous care of her father's collection. And it was so important to her to keep it all together. And then it was like she had this opportunity for retirement and then she just gets fucked over in every way.

It's just... It's a fucking travesty. It really is a fucking travesty. This is why communism. This is why capitalism ruins everything. This is why we can't have nice things. Yeah, and this is why archives don't get digitized, because it's too much work, even if you're making money off of selling off the best photos, which the library doesn't do.

Right. In other news, I have a new business idea where, you know, University libraries will pay me to take ownership of their junk, and I will scan it and send it back to them. I promise. Is cocaine involved? Could be. I'm in. Cocaine, openly taunting FBI agents, Babe Ruth.

Yeah. This has it all. Man, let's do it. Hello, Mr. Police. The John D. Bucksmith photo archive. Yeah, that this is... This is where John D. Foxsmith gets his money. We are John D. Fuxmith.

We've gone... We've been John D. Fuxmith this entire time. Surprise, Bishes. Surprise bitch. I thought you'd seen the last of me. The John D.

fucksmith was in you all along. Yeah. I hope so. I'm sorry. I'm feral tonight. I mean, I've been hanging out with some feral people. It's not even registering.

Not even registering one bit. I think that pretty much covers everything. We are being cited by an undergraduate in a paper. Yeah, shuts out. We should watch our language. They're adults. No, we absolutely should not. Their professor will then come listen to us.

Let them say fuck. Let them say fuck in academic papers. Let the undergrad say fuck. Let the undergrad say fuck in their paper. There's just the funny little ending line is not long after Rogers was imprisoned, teenagers took to the diamond using hundreds of wooden bats and baseballs at Rogers had desecrated with fake autographs. The FBI had seized the equipment during its investigation.

After rubbing off the forged signatures, the FBI gave the gear to local youth baseball leagues. Nice. They're just brand new bats and baseballs. So yeah, that's the story of, is it, John Rogers? I don't know. I guess I'll steal the bit from, from lie, cheat, and steal. So a verdict, was it worth it? He got, I think, eight years.

12. It got boosted because he... I said 12, but it said he was out in, like, 2027. I guess that's 12 years from 2017. 2015? I don't know. Anyway, he got somewhere between 8 and 12 years. Okay.

Yeah. So, hmm, it's too long of a prison sentence just to live the high life for... Oh, he was doing good for, what, 2008, 2008 to 20. So he's got, he's got nine good years and then 12 bad years. So I'm going to say no, not enough good time. He didn't, he didn't take his time long enough. Maybe if you got a shorter prison sentence, I'd say worth it. Yeah.

Yeah, not worth it. Prison abolition. This is my answer. Jay wants to do it. Especially for stupid shit like this. Are you kidding me? Yeah. No, this is all pretty stupid.

Yeah. Like, I don't care what happens to him. I want that nice lady to get her retirement money back. She did win a judgment against him. There you go. Cool. And the remains of her father's collection were sold to Digital Archive Group. Cool.

So I think they've saved as much of it as they can. But I don't know if he's ever going to be able to pay back that default judgment because he's in prison and not making any money. So I don't know if she'll get it. Yeah. In that case, like, if you're going to make it so that someone else like pay a thing, but then you put the person who's supposed to pay it in prison. And then the person who is supposed to get that money is never going to get it. So like this.

Like who's benefiting here? Can we like go fund me for this nice lady? Like, I hope she's doing all right. You know? I hope so. Like, fuck him. Fuck him.

I mean. Don't put it in prison. Don't put anybody in prison. But make sure the people who got screwed over get unscrewed. The thing that really got me though is that there was just like this entire FBI investigation probe into fake sports memorabilia. Hello, Mr. Police. The most useless thing you could be focusing your attention on, it's always the rich people shit, right?

It's only shit that rich people care about. Yeah. Fascinating story, though. He can hit it once. It's like the Donkey Kong meme. Was it worth it? I don't know, but Jay would like to hit it once. Just for the Babe Ruth's signature thing.

just for that. I'm saying for that. He gets to hit it once. Because that's a good bit. I can't find Mary Brace online. And all the obituaries I found are not her. So hopefully she's doing all right. Good for her.

If you are listening to this, Mary, we're on your side. We're on your side. Is that better? Yeah, it's fine. Cool. Found another obituary. Still not her. Okay.

So hopefully she's out there. She'll live forever. Getting it done. We are on Blue Sky now, all of us. So go to Library Punk on Blue Sky and the rest of our handles are in the description. Yep. And. Oh, I've got an invite code.

Yeah, I've got one too. I told Audrey I was going to give it back to her because she gave me that one to set up the Library Punk account. I was on data transfer, a trans femme reading of Digimon. and I was on Postponies, a transphim reading of my Little Pony friendship is magic. And I will be on Jay's podcast, tender subject, in like August. Four or five weeks. Yeah, in August. You've got two episodes ahead of you.

So you've got, yeah, it'll be like in like a month and a half. I think it's everywhere I've been. Yeah. Listen to my podcast. It's good. I swear. Get your podcast on. Yeah.

Say, do you should come on sometime. Be a weirdo. It'll be great. All right. All right, good night.