Kevin Barrows/Former FBI Agent E411

0:00 Sports Card Nation, the hobby is the people. Weekly news and interviews, it's your number one source. Sports Card Nation, the hobby is the people. Sports Card Nation. What is up everybody? Welcome to episode 411 of Sports Card Nation. I'm John Newman. As I always say, glad to be back. Let's get some thanks to our sponsors out of the way. In no particular order, SGC, Iron Sports Card, Sports Collectors Digest, Hobby Hotline, Upper Deck, Card Ladder, and the Certified Trading Card Association. Our guest today is, I've always wanted to talk to an FBI agent about some of the stuff We're seeing in the hobby.

0:59 And I get to do that with this week's guest and next week's guest because he's part one and part two. And that's Kevin Barrows. Now, he's a former FBI agent. He's not in the bureau any longer, but he was. So he has that perspective and he's going to share some of his thoughts and insights and opinions, you know, from sort of an inside view perspective. from working in the Bureau. Again, he doesn't work there now. He's the host of his own podcast as well, Follow the Lies, which, like the title says, looks at investigations and the like.

1:43 So he's going to share some of his insights. He works with professional sports teams as well still to this day. So we'll learn some about him about what he does there as well. So try to bring you different content that maybe you're not getting other places. A lot of stuff's redundant. I get that. I try not to be as much as possible. And this was an opportunity to do something not covered as much and to speak to someone that was in the Bureau and get his perspective on things. So I appreciate Kevin coming on again. Today is part one, and then next Friday will be part two.

2:31 Attention, Sports Card Nation viewers. What up, kids? It's your boy Scott Hanson from NFL Red Zone. Oh, we're back. Ball is back. The hobby never ends. And before you know it, I'm going to be on your screen again. Rocking that octobox, knocking the bottom out of the witching hour, and announcing seven hours of Red Zone football. But as you watch Red Zone, just. Save some time. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, to check out John. and. Sports Card Nation. Let's have a great season, people.

3:27 All right. Real happy to have the next gentleman on the Sports Card Nation podcast. He's a former FBI agent who now is one of the hosts of the Sports Detectives. And, you know, we're going to conversate about the hobby. And unfortunately, it's not going to be all about that. But unfortunately, some of the pratfalls and things we see in the hobby, the not so good side, which, you know, we can't sweep it under the rug. It's unfortunate. And not just relegated to the hobby, but we're going to talk more about sports and the hobby side of it today. Without further ado, Mr. Kevin Barrows, welcome to SportsCard Nation. Thank you very much, John. It's a pleasure to be here.

4:07 I greatly appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, you know, it's not, let's be honest, right? It's not all the time you get to talk to a former FBI agent. It's not necessarily a common place unless sometimes you know them or a family or something along those lines. So I'm looking forward to hearing some of your perspective of some of the things you've seen. while you were there and you're currently not and, and, and your perspective now, you know, as a former FBI agent, but let, let's talk about your show sports detective, how that started, what you, what you delve into and what you do there. Sure.

4:50 If I can tell, start back just to the Bureau, if I may, John, real quick. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was very fortunate in the Bureau. I was a little bit like Forrest Gump. I happened to be involved in some of the biggest cases in the country at the time. And, I was a case agent on two of the largest cases. One was a mob on Wall Street case. We arrested 120 in one day. And then the next one I went and I ended up being involved in the largest identity theft case in history. And from that, I ended up leaving the Bureau and going into private practice and And I began to get hired by professional sports teams to speak to their players and management about identity theft and how to protect themselves. And from that, I ended up doing training videos for athletes and professional sports teams and MLB and NHL, some of the NBA. And from there, I developed a relationship with these with major sports leagues and And to this day, still helping players with issues, navigating certain issues, fraud and related.

5:49 But from that experience, I was found by, I had done some shows. I did a show called Inside the American Mob, which is still running, I think, on Amazon or Netflix. And I've done some interviews in national TV. So from there, I guess I was discovered by some producers who were developing this new show called Sports Detectives. And essentially, they were looking for hosts to go and find missing sports artifacts, famous sports artifacts. Initially, they just wanted me to be maybe kind of a talking head. And then when I started speaking to producers, they said, hey, we'd love if you'd host it or co-host it with a female journalist, sports journalist. So an investigator and a journalist put together It seems like a good combination. And that's kind of how the show developed.

6:38 How long has it been since you started the show? Like how, how, how much, how far into it have you gotten? Well, the show, the show ran for one season in 2016. It did very well on the Smithsonian channel. It was only designed to be one, one season. It took, it was a lot of travel, a lot of research, a lot of investigation, but it did very well for sure. And I continue to work with sports clubs today. When you're working with these sports entities and players, athletes, and the teams themselves, is it just identity theft? Or are you just giving them sort of, hey, you got to be wary of this, what's going on out here?

7:21 Without giving up the secret sauce, as I say, like whatever you share. Absolutely. What is your approach with athletes and the teams themselves? Yeah, no, it started as identity theft, but it's developed into much, much more than that. I assist players with all kinds of problems. There's so much fraud, as you can imagine. There's people out there trying to scam and impersonate all the time. There's extortion. You know, you think about a young athlete in a hotel room with some money, with a computer, with fame and fortune. These things, you know, people find them. So it's, it's, there's a lot of issues that athletes face and I try to, I help them navigate through some of those.

8:02 How much, you know, let's go right. Like on the hobby side, right. We, we know forgeries happen with signatures. How much, how much experience or, you know, or background do you have in that? Is that something the players themselves are concerned with and wary of? Yeah. I mean, I, certainly players are their brand, right. Is everything, um, My experience really started in the Bureau, although I didn't work the cases, I was there in the New York office when they did Operation Bullpen. And that was a really big deal. And that, it was believed at the time that that had solved the problem, right? First, I really, the world wasn't cognizant of a huge problem in the industry, but that, you know, that case in particular really alerted everyone to this, perhaps a big problem, right? In memorabilia world. So, The thought was, well, that solved it. Now they're developing these things called holograms. There's these certificates of authenticity. We've solved the problem. But as you learn in life and when you've worked enough fraud cases that where there's money and opportunity, you're always going to find fraud. And they're always ahead of the curve, whether it be technology or otherwise.

9:13 So we know now that that wasn't the end of it. It kind of was the beginning of the process. And from there, once I got out, yes. Dealing with players and protecting their brand became really important. But when I did sports detectives and I went out and, for example, authenticated or tried to authenticate a Lou Gehrig bat that was found and other memorabilia, that's when I came to realize the diligence that it's required, particularly in historical memorabilia, but that you really have to do your due diligence to make sure that you're safe from being scammed. Yeah, and you mentioned the holograms and the letters of authenticity.

9:54 Those are now getting fugazied and faked. And like you pointed out, Kevin, the people doing this are not dumb people. They might be criminals, right? And I'm not condoning criminal activity, but they're honing the craft like the good guys are trying to hone their craft. I've used this term, it's almost like a chess game. And each side is really trying to stay ahead of the other ones as much as possible. Very much so. Yeah. And I've heard this, and you can confirm or if you can comment on it, I've heard like, you know, when we think about computer hacking or burglaries that, you know, not just maybe not just the FBI, but law enforcement in general will hire like reformed people who used to do that, who maybe went to prison, served their time, came out, and strive for a life of non-criminal activity to maybe make a difference, that those kinds of folks are utilized because who better knows what the bad guys may do next than a former, I don't know what to say, former bad guy assuming they're going to go on the straight and narrow. Is that correct? Yeah.

11:11 No, that's very true, particularly in an industry that's very niche-based. And that you have to have specific, you know, knowledge of the insides and outs of an industry. Yeah. And look, a great example of that is everybody knows Catch Me If You Can and Frank Abagnale. Right. He was a legendary thief and the bureau ended up using him afterwards as a resource to help them uncover scams and how these scams were perpetrated. It's kind of a shortcut. Right. So, yeah, you know, that that definitely happens. And I think it's a really good use of these people, you know, once they've served their time or paid their dues. But, you know, for me, there's been, you know, you see out there people, you know, say, well, it could be 50, could be 80% of memorabilia out there is counterfeit. Nobody knows quite what the number is. But, you know, this recent, I don't know if you know about this recent case with Mr. Mancave and this whole Brett Lemieux scandal that broke last year is really troubling. Because that case, he started this company in 2018. He sold mass volumes, mass volumes of memorabilia. But he was a master at forging holograms.

12:23 He forged COAs. And by his estimation, in his kind of manifesto, he says it could be up to $ 350 million. And you have to worry about every piece of memorabilia that's out there right now. That's terrifying. He just found a way to perfect the auto pen. He said he vectorized signatures. So he made the auto pen look like it wasn't an auto pen, right? He went to China and found people who are artists who can replicate holograms well enough. And he. Could have done a lot of damage to this industry. Now, I don't think that the investigators feel it was quite as much as he was bragging about. But whatever it is, it sends shockwaves through an industry.

13:07 Yeah, and all being said, that could be the biggest case to really rock the hobby. Like you said, it's illegal, but this is a gentleman who wound up committing suicide as the law enforcement started to move in and get closer. And like you said, he wrote a manifesto, kind of one of his last things he did before he took his own life. And this is you know, he is a bad guy. I'm not the, you know, the proof's in the pudding. Even he himself admitted he's a bad guy. It's not debatable, but he also was a family guy. Uh, you know, he had kids and, and, uh, and a wife, but, uh, rather than face sort of the music, he took that, uh, way out of it, which is sad for at least his, you know, the family that, uh, and friends that he left behind that, um, you know, but, um, you know, it would have been interesting had he not done that to find out. I mean, obviously he's would have been a great information source, even besides the manifesto, Kevin, just, you know, what he could have shared and maybe help future cases or, or prosecution of them. And, you know, it was, you know, it's not new. It was a very large. And again, like you said, You know, there's some bravado there. So is it as large as claiming it to be? Whatever the case may be, it's not a small case. I think that's the safe assumption. And

14:38 you brought, you know, the FBI, I read a quote, you know, like you just mentioned, that they believe like 50% of autographs out there in the industry are not genuine. And you mentioned 50 to 80%. I had Steve Grad on some weeks back. And he says, you know, he believes, and he's an autograph authentication expert, and he says, unfortunately, he thinks that number could even be higher than 50%. And he even pointed out, sometimes it's not even just a legal activity, like in the case with Lemieux, but, you know, back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, like clubhouse attendants would sign for the players just so they didn't have to do it. So, there's no, no malcontent as far as like someone's paying for it.

15:29 Right. But Hey, the clubby would just say, so I need to learn Mickey Mantle's autograph, let's say. And someone thinks they have a man autograph. And it was the clubhouse attendant who just got, you know, expertise at being able to replicate it. Even though it's not Mickey's themselves. So there, you know, there's even that side where it's not even a necessary, a financial crime. It's just, hey, it's just the player doesn't have to sign as many autos potentially. So there's so many different tentacles and different avenues of this. I mean, in your opinion, where do you place that number?

16:10 Do you believe it's more than 50%? Obviously, it's all speculation and guesstimation. But how do you see it as someone, you know, on both sides, being in the Bureau and now doing what you do now for yourself? Yeah, I mean, I would certainly place it higher than 50%, unfortunately. Again, this is an industry where it's so, in many ways, easy to make a lot of money with little effort. It really is. I mean, and unfortunately, yeah, you prey on innocent people, but this is a hobby that's a hobby of passion, right? And whenever you have passion for something, that's where the best scammers thrive, right? Because if I tell you and you say your favorite player is Patrick Mahomes and I say I've got two Patrick Mahomes signed jerseys, what are you going to do? You only two left.

16:59 I'll take it. You're not worried about diligence. You're not worried about, well, let me go through the process of making sure I'm getting something authentic. It's that, you know, the passion and and the great best scammers prey on that and and That combination of enormous amounts of money and a kind of a passion for many people is fertile ground for scammers. You are listening to the Sports Card Nation podcast. We'll be right back after this break. When you're dealing with sports cards, guessing isn't a strategy. A strategy requires relying on accurate data that you can trust. That's why the hobby uses Card Ladder. Card Ladder provides hundreds of millions of historical prizes going back over 20 years, plus real-time tracking of comps from across the hobby as they happen. We track sales from every major platform while working together with marketplaces and grading companies to provide the most reliable data in the industry. Card Ladder's research team carefully vets millions of transactions. We provide dozens of category indexes and thousands of player indexes to help you get a big-picture view of the markets. With Card Ladder, you can look up prices for any card in any grade, track and manage your collection in real time, and study industry-wide metrics, all to enhance your collecting experience. Ready to level up your hobby? Go to CardLadder.com right now. Tap try it for free or get started today.

18:36 We are back! Obviously, it's not law enforcement or FBI to necessarily, you know, their job is to catch criminals, apprehend criminals, have them go to trial, face the music if they're convicted, serve their time, whatever that sentence may be. Who do you think the onus falls on itself? I don't think it's all on one entity. Is it somewhat on the athletes? Is it somewhat on the leads? Is it on the card manufacturers themselves to have these athletes sign items, whether they're cards for packs to be inserted in the packs or even memorabilia that's going to go on for sale?

19:26 Where does the Owners falls. It's just sort of a combination of all those folks as a conglomerate. I think so. I mean, I think it falls on the big authentication factories and companies, your PSAs, JSAs and the like. I think it falls and there's more that they can and I think ultimately will do. I think it certainly falls on the. enforcement because I think there are huge cases to be made, as you can see, like this Brett Lemieux case. I think that there are massive rings of these operations out there. It's not usually just mom and pops that happens, but that's not necessarily, in my opinion, the norm. And, you know, the Bureau's task is always to go after the biggest, you know, groups and arrest as many people as possible in these rings, take down these rings. And I think that is something that law enforcement does focus on and should continue to do so. And the way you get to these things is through cooperators, through people getting complaints from people who say, hey, I went to this place and it's the third one I got. It doesn't look right. That's what happened with Lemieux, right?

20:30 Somebody finally came forward and said, hey, this doesn't look right. But I think it also falls on the consumers. I think you have to be vigilant and do what you need to do to protect yourself to the best of your ability. Yeah, I agree. Right. And again, even with COAs and holographic authentication, you still got to, to me, you still got to do your best homework, your research, especially with a high dollar item, right? If you're buying a high dollar item and, you know, and here's the thing. I go on eBay quite a bit. I've purchased stuff. I sell stuff on eBay as a dealer. And there's stuff, listen, I'm not even, I wouldn't even classify myself as an autograph expert, but there's stuff I see and I know that's not real. Even the title of the auction is sort of misleading. When I see that, I get mad at eBay because I'm like, if I'm catching it, and they have their own authentic department themselves, But if I'm seeing it like in 25 seconds, like I always get mad at them. Like, how is that?

21:42 You know, and I've even there's been on a couple occasions, Kevin, where there's like you can report this listing and I've done it. Maybe hopefully save someone. You're not going to get me. But, you know, there's a lot. A mom wants to buy little Jimmy. That's his favorite player. And I'm going to go on eBay. His birthday is coming up. in a month or two, oh, man, this price seems pretty fair. I'm going to buy it. So while it might not fool me, you know, and I hate to say it like that, it's going to fool probably quite a few other people. And when I see that, though, where I'm getting back on tangent, I always get mad at eBay because, like, why are you not catching it?

22:22 Maybe not immediately, but, like, how are those slipping through the cracks like that? Kind of what are your thoughts on, like, Whether it be in this case, I brought up eBay, but even other ones, they're not the only one. Yeah, well, that's a great question, John. Here's my position on that. Just like online where these platforms are given immunity. Like if I go online and I go into a chat and I begin saying horribly defamatory things, you can sue me, but you can't sue them. They say, well, they have immunity because we're just the platform. We just provide a way for you to communicate. We don't look at what you're saying, right? We have no responsibility for what you're saying. That's what it is with eBay and these sellers, right? They have immunity. So they're just saying, we're a marketplace. We don't go in there and tell you everything is valid, or we don't go in there and assess the validity of anything that's being sold. I think that immunity, and that's where I think the government should get involved, is they should revoke that immunity. Because if you make eBay responsible now for what's out there for forgeries, you'd be surprised how much scrutiny goes into these sellers. I mean, there's going to be They're going to go to blockchain. They're going to do all kinds of sophisticated things to make sure that they're not held liable.

23:37 Yeah, I agree. And listen, eBay should care, right? Those are their customers and potential future customers, right, that are purchasing. While the items themselves might not be theirs, the customers are theirs, right? And if a customer gets burnt, you may lose a customer. Through word of mouth, that one customer could be a thousand customers. per se. So they, they should care whether they're responsible directly or not. I, you know, this is me talking, you know, they, they should be, they should have enough integrity to care, to try to find as much of that rooted out. I don't expect them to get everything, but for me, I just see a little bit too much where I say like, where are you eBay? What are you doing? Like, you know, so.

24:26 You know, I think they care, but they don't care as much as they would if they were also on the hook. Yeah. So there's I think it's just a different level. Right. Yeah, no doubt. You know, you mentioned government regulation. It's come up in the hobby, Kevin, that, you know, it's you know, you fall on one side or the other. Right. People say, hey, the hobby's never had regulation. It should never it should never have it. You know, the old school folks like. We, we, we police ourselves in the sense we are the regulation. And I agree with that somewhat, but, and I'll say this, I'm not necessarily opposed for Gummer. If it's done above board, it doesn't become necessary witch hunt.

25:09 And we're trying, I I'm for anything that can take the bad guys out of the equation. I mean, why would, why wouldn't you be, you know what I mean? Like if, And maybe some of the people against regulations, maybe they're not doing, again, I'm painting with a broad brush, but maybe they're not doing stuff all above board themselves. Maybe not on the level of Brett Lemieux, but, you know, that sort of thing. So my answer always is to that. I'm for anything that makes the hobby a safer and better place, right? Whatever that entails, as long as it's not too over the top and you know, that sort of thing. Like what's your kind of, you know, what's your, like, I guess a twofold question, Kevin, do you partake in the hobby yourself and either whether you do or you don't, like, what are your thoughts on whether the hobby should ever government?

26:04 Well, I don't partake in a hobby. I mean, I, do I have memorabilia? Yes. From working with athletes and so forth. And my kids love it. And they have, you know, signed an autograph pucks and things from players. But am I a collector? No. But I love it, meaning I don't do it, but I love the entire hobby. I think it's fantastic. And I'm a huge sports nut. And my opinion on the government is having worked for the government, it's hard for me to ever say it's good for the government to be involved in much because I know what a disaster it can be. But I do think the Hobby Protection Act should be extended to memorabilia because right now it's, you know, to coins and things like that, which is great. But that making it a federal crime will in some way act as a deterrent to some people because the penalties, as you know, can be so much more severe federally.

26:51 And I think that I see that as being something that would be good for the hobby. I also I mentioned the removing the immunity from these platforms. I think that would be good if the government got involved and did that. Otherwise, as far as the government trying to standardize things, I just don't think it ever works. It sounds great in theory. but I don't think it ever works. I just don't think the government is capable of keeping the controls as people would envision. Yeah, I kind of agree. I guess that's what I was saying, where I just don't want it to be too much, where it becomes sort of overbearing. Even where people who are doing it above board in the right way just feel like someone's breathing down their neck.

27:36 And remember, John, those costs get transferred to someone. Now, if you have to go. Through all this paperwork and filings and all this stuff, it's going to be at some point the consumer is going to feel the hit for them. I mean, it's just the way it is. Yeah, that's a great point, too. We forget about some of the logistics and how that works, right? There's always a bill on the other end. No question. It's got to be paid. I want to go back to the Lemieux case. Very few people in the hobby don't know about it. Yep. The gentleman involved, I say gentleman loosely, but the person involved in it obviously took the easy way out. You never want to see that in any situation. In a case like that, from your knowledge, what continues to happen?

28:24 I mean, the case still is there. He's deceased, but there's other people involved in some form or facet. So even though he's no longer with us walking the earth, The case doesn't just die off with him. Am I correct? You're 100% correct. First, they've got to go through. They've done an extensive search. That's a lot of stuff. So they're going to go through all the documents if they haven't already. They're going to review everything. They're going to see who else was involved. And they're going to be out interviewing those people. And if there's enough information, they'll go arrest those people. Otherwise, they're going to interview people. They're going to try to collect more evidence and see if, you know, this is a big conspiracy. And there's a lot of other people they can pull into this whole thing who had knowledge or assisted in this fraud. So I think that's probably the process at this point. It takes time, as you can imagine, to do that.

29:16 Right. Let's go through all this stuff and define, locate people that interview these people to determine whether there's enough to charge these people. That's kind of a lengthy process. But that's I'm certain where they're in, you know, in now somewhere in that process. How long can something like that last? You know, we hear about cold cases and eventually like if there's no more leads, they just kind of, you know, until maybe someone else maybe takes another. look at it or some fresh eyes. But in something like this, how long can an investigation go on, I guess? And the fact that this person, you know, committed suicide, does that change that equation or not really? Well, certainly the fact that he committed suicide is is a challenge because you can't get him to cooperate and give you the details, right? It's very easy. He's an insider.

30:06 He knows, hey, this is the person who did my, you know, vectorizing. He's the person who, you know, so the question is, he was doing this and did he know why he was doing it? You know, you have to prove all the elements of the fraud. But so without that, it's a challenge. So law enforcement is essentially piecing it together from his manifesto, which is, you know, there's some, obviously it's his, so there's some important nuggets in there, but also in what they see, because they might not match up. As they go through all this evidence, his files, and again, start interviewing people who he dealt with, other wholesalers and retailers he dealt with, that whole process, it could take some time. It could take a good year.

30:48 It could take more than a year at times, depending on how many people they believe could be involved. Or frankly, it could wrap up quickly if they said, well, here's only five people that were involved in the whole scheme. Four of them are in China. Right. Or three of them are in China. That's a problem. There may be two, two others. That's the kind of analysis they're going through right now. I'm guessing. I believe if you know, you could correct me if you know, and I'm wrong. I believe, I think he said in this manifesto that his family was not part of it. He was acting with other hobby people, but not his family. Obviously he did what he did. Is there a great, I thought about this when it, when it first happened, like, Is there a grace period? Even though he puts in the letter or the note, like, hey, just so everyone knows, this is me, not my family, my wife. They had no idea. They thought everything was on the up and up as far as they're concerned.

31:41 And then he does what he does. Is there like a grace period where like, hey, they lost their husband, brother, their dad, or do, obviously the family has to be interviewed, right? You have to, just because he puts in the letter, hey, they didn't have nothing to do with that. This is someone who lies about a lot of things, right? So how do we're going to take this person? Letter is going to be like the last, the untruthful thing on the way out. Like what happens there? Do they give a little grace or how does that work? It might be a menace, but that's just how my mind sort of. Yeah. Well, the question is if the family, you know, lawyered up, retained an attorney, then there's going to be a negotiation.

32:26 Then the attorney is going to determine when the interview takes place and that kind of thing. So that could take some time. That I don't know the details of that. But so there's probably, there's going to be a grace period unless right afterwards the wife said, I don't need a lawyer and I'll talk. You know, that happens at times. I don't think there's any inherent grace period after something like this. I think the Bureau would want to speak to her as soon as for the family, as soon as possible, whoever may be in the know. But I'm not sure that's going to be it's going to be available to him depending on whether she's got a lawyer or not. Yeah. I was just, I've just had my mind works, Kevin. Like, how does that, you know, because it's very selfish in so many ways, but even with like, now he leaves everyone else sort of the, the burden of answering the questions where if he had faced the music, he could have bore the brunt of that as, as the perpetrator of the crime.

33:20 Right. Thanks to Kevin for coming on. And like I said, this was part one. Part two will be next week. So more with Kevin Barrows, former FBI investigator. And really, you know, got to ask some stuff that you don't get to ask, you know, all the time and really appreciate that. So he will be back for the conclusion of our conversation on next week's episode. All right. Let's wrap up the show with some closing things. And as always, we can't do this without you, and you're much appreciated. Time for our Hobby is the People announcer of the week.

34:04 Hi, this is Danny Blair with Baltimore Sports Collectibles, and I love what I do because the hobby is the people. Like to be the Hobby is the People announcer of the week? Do a WAV or MP3 file and send it to sportscardnationpc at gmail.com.