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ebay seller arrested today and scrappers off the streets.

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ebay seller arrested today and scrappers off the streets.
silvercreek said:
Wow! Glad they caught these guys. And I hope the DA goes after third strike, given his previous offenses!
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The 3 strikes thing is insane! It should scare everyone straight. I've heard a lot of cases with this law. 1 guy stole a couple of times as an adolescent (unarmed). 10 years later, he cheated on his driver's test. Got 26 years to life.

Another guy's 3rd strike was stealing a dvd (also unarmed) 25 years to life.

rape? kidnapping? 3rd strike is a $2 million illegal importing operation? Yeah...he'll be locked up for a while.

Edit: I'd also like to add my state doesn't even have attempted murder charges. You can shoot someone in the face 50 times and stab them 100 times and as long as they don't die, you can get a max sentence of 20 years for aggravated assault. Most serve 5-8. Steal bubble gum 3x in California? 25 years - life! LOL Ok maybe not that bad but you never know.
 
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Good riddance. Scares me that he was released on his own recognizance though! Maybe we should email the link from the story to all of the Ebay pin sellers who are selling lots for $1/pin or less? Kind of scare them straight and get them off the market!
 
Good job cops, 1999 more to go.

I know there are several legal and ethical issues around these scrappers.

However at personal level, it has been fairly disappointing for me coming home from a WDW trip and finding out the pins I collected from CM's are 70% scrappers after logging into pinpics.
 
GhostInTheSnow said:
Well, nice to see those scrappers won't be making it near anybodies collections. Although I didn't realise how much money really gets put into scrappers.
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I've been thinking about that $2 million estimate because that seemed high to me as well. I was trying to piece together their estimate and the article said that they had received an estimated 80 shipments which probably means that they have been doing this for years. The article also said they had about 100k pins so if you make the assumption that the one shipment was for 100k pins then that would be 100k pins x 80 shipments = 8 million pins over the life of the scam and if they paid 25 cents per pin that would come out to the $2 million.

That's just how I'm guessing that they came to their number.....but that seems really excessive to me..... I mean...that's a lot of freakin' pins!!! That would be an aweful lot of pins to move through the channel. Even if they had been doing this for 8 years they would have to be averaging 1 million pins a year and if you sell them on eBay in lots of 100 that is still 10,000 listings and sales per year. I just can't see how that is possible....I think their estimate is off. More realisticly, my guess is that they maybe got 100k pins total over all 80 shipments which would be about 1,250 pins per shipment which seems like a much more reasonable number. I'd guess it is more of a $25k opperation at cost rather than $2 million, but hey, $2 million looks so much more dramatic on a news paper headline!
 
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HeatherFeather said:
So based on a previous poster's info that he/she had friends who knew these people and traded pins with them, does anyone else wonder if these guys were members of this or other pin trading forums?
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I have heard at least of one person who is an Ebay seller and *only buys* on this forum and sells them on Ebay at much higher prices.

The said person was also on dizpins and bought some LE250 and lower pins very cheap.

As I am not 100% sure, I do not feel like spreading gossip though.
 

I think I know who you may be talking about and to my knowledge the person doesn't deal in scrappers. The person definitely buys from here and then lists them on ebay but there isn't really anything illegal about that. It may tork people off and make them regret selling their pins, but not in the same category as this.
 
CSU Fullerton
Used to work with Bob! He actually worked at Disneyland. Very sad!


**** I did not write the above... i left posters name off and just has location now.

I found it on another page and thought DPF members would want any and all info. *****
******** both guys are out.. *****
 

It is very easy to sell 100k pins. If you put in Disney Pins on EBAY you get over 100k listings. With 52 weeks in a year that is at least 5.2 million listings a year. And those are listings. Some selling one pin and many selling lots of pins.

Also, the package intercepted weighed 150 pounds.

http://orangecountyda.com/home/index.asp?page=8&recordid=2346

The fraudulent operation was discovered in February 2011 when U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers and import specialists intercepted a parcel at Los Angeles International Airport addressed to Smyrak containing more than 150 pounds of counterfeit Disney pins.
 
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That just doesn't add up. At any given time there are only about 100k Disney pin listings on ebay. There is absolutely no way there is anyone putting up 100k listings per week and certainly not a two-man operation. There's just no way they could do it. To put up 100k listings a week you would need to do over 14k per day! Not possible. And just because it is listed, doesn't mean it sells. Thousands and thousands of listings go unsold. The volume just doesn't add up...

I know what the articles said, but that doesn't mean they are right. The media screws things up all the time.

We also don't know how they are valuing the pins. Are they valuing them at purchase cost or at average Disney retail? We all know that hidden mickeys are typically not $7.95 pins. If they valued them that way that would point to 250k to get to the $2 million value. That is a far more realistic number.

Or, lets assume that every pin weighs approximately 0.2 ounces. If the shipment weighed 150 pounds that would be about 12,000 pin. Times 80 (and there is nothing saying that all the other shipments were anywhere near that large) then you are at 960k pins over the life of the scam. At $2 a piece you can get back to the $2 million estimate but that still seems like an aweful lot of pins for two people to move through the system.

I think this a large scam for sure, but not a 2 million dollar one. It just doesn't make sense.
 
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erudolf said:
I think this a large scam for sure, but not a 2 million dollar one. It just doesn't make sense.
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I agree, I have been trying to calculate it out but have never gotten close to two million.

It should be noted that both of these guys have now plead not guilty. Can't wait to see the final outcome of all of this.
 
Not wanting to overreact but....They should send them to an Island in the middle of nowhere and allow pin traders to throw there pins at them....Not wanting to overreact,

Its good to see these people being caught, heres one for the good guys
 
What if these guys were not only selling on eBay but maybe supplying to other eBay sellers? That would explain the huge number of pins being mentioned here. It sounds like they were also pin collectors themselves.
 
This has probably been discussed in another thread, but I have always been curious to know what happens to all the scrappers that end up on cast member lanyards. Do they take them off and destroy them, or does anyone even monitor what is on the lanyards? Because I've had cast members tell me that they recently had their lanyard "refreshed," which I assumed means more desirable pins were added, but I never thought to ask what happens to the ones that get removed.
 
the small pins that they sell are at least 3 pins per ounce, and many of these pins are much thinner than the authentic ones, so the 150 lbs of pins had probably between 7,200 - 7,500 multiply that by 80 shipments that is a lot of counterfeit pins
 
I would guess that if they were sophisticated enough to be shipping pins to China to be counterfeited that they distributed pins through others as well. Oddly, they were not likely responsible for the fakes that come out before the pin is released, though. Hopefully the $2M number is correct and, even at $7 per pin, they removed that many counterfeit pins. That actually could be a noticeable reduction in fake pins at the parks, if only for a short time.
 
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