I’m coming into this conversation from a completely neutral stance. I’ve seen both sides of the argument and frankly, this is one of the most confounding cases of potential fraud I’ve ever seen. Most of the time, you know pretty well what happened through circumstance and the behavior of those being accused (or the accusers).
I’ll give my thought process about this whole thing: an 11 year old autistic boy who lost all his cards in a house fire. My first thought, even before this whole accusation broke out, when I read the original post was “man, that looks sketchy.” It’s too convenient and, if it is a scam, was constructed to get the maximum amount of sympathy from fellow collectors, especially the very generous ones here on this site. So, for that reason, I have to say whoever decided to look into the situation was completely justified. It seemed fishy to me from the get-go. So, I have no issue with them looking into it.
Next was the actual evidence, or lack thereof. This is another strike against Jeff as all the tidbits being thrown out by Dan and others, while not really proving anything, shows a consistent trail of convenience and coincidence. For example, the statement saying something to the effect of “entering large collection” on Jeff’s profile page is very fishy. Why not state the reason why you’d be listing JR’s cards on your account or not create a new collection for him? There were other tidbits too which point to something fishy. That combined with anyone being unable to find evidence of the fire looks bad.
Yet, Jeff’s behavior in this thread and history are the complete opposite reaction Id expect from a scammer. First, he offered to send cards back to everyone. Let’s pause here, someone earlier in the thread tried to argue that this was proof that he was scamming people. I disagree. When was the last time a scammer ever offered to send cards back, and when was a scammer ever concerned with his/her reputation? Typically, the scammer will just go black and not log on again (and get blocked) or leave one last forum post saying “Haha suckers” ... and get blocked. Why is Jeff worried about keeping his account and saving his reputation if he already theoretically got what he wanted if he were a scammer — the cards!
Next, let’s think like a scammer for a minute (I’m majoring in computer science with a cyber security flavor and I’m in ROTC. Both of these groups of people are taught to think like the enemy so you can predict behavior). Let’s say you’ve built up your account and made about a dozen or more good, smaller trades with people. What is our goal as a scammer? We’re trying to rob people of as much value as possible in order to maximize our time investment. Two problems with the theory that Jeff is a scammer in this sense. 1) If Jeff’s “big, super-dooper ultimate plan” was to ask to receive 25,000 random cards, presumably mostly commons and maybe a few cards that run for a few dollars at most, that seems a tad bit unambitious doesn’t it? I’d be trying to set up a big-ticket trade with another online member for high dollar cards. I’d want something that I know I could easily sell, and definitely something of small quantity so I could flip it quickly. The last thing I’d want is a few monster boxes of commons. 2) If Jeff was a scammer, why would he use this site? This site is outstanding for making trades with fellow collectors, but I’m not quite sure most on this site would be anxious to make a trade worth anywhere in the hundreds to thousands of dollars range to make Jeff’s theoretical time investment pay off. eBay would be my go-to choice.
Finally, there’s Jeff’s existing reputation outside of this issue. It has been, well, really good (I’m not including the last feedback left in that discussion because that was posted after this issue went public, so that might be an attempt at blackballing Jeff).
So, as someone who is torn on this issue and watched from the outside quietly to this point, and someone who didn’t send anything at the original request. I’m leaning until innocence until proven guilty. I would be cautious in dealing with Jeff in the future, but that can be resolved very easily by simply requesting Jeff to send his cards first in a trade before you send yours, especially if you are a highly reputable user on this site. This is not an insult to Jeff, as another site I was a part of used that system religiously, and it was very effective! I was still sending cards first even after I had made 30 successful trades with no issues.
So, long story short, I’d be cautious, but until we learn more (if we ever do) I wouldn’t immediately reject Jeff or refuse to deal with him in the future until we are definitely shown proof that he lied.
#COMMONCARDSMATTER
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