A Facebook post just exposed over 4 million fake sports memorabilia items and $350M in sales over 20 years—affecting Fanatics, Panini, Tristar, and more. It ended in a police raid and an early grave.

The hobby isn’t just cooked… it’s charred.

This week, a jaw-dropping Facebook post blew the lid off what may be the largest counterfeit memorabilia ring since Operation Bullpen. A user named Brett Lemieux casually confessed to helping pump over 4 million fake items into the hobby — raking in $350+ million in sales across two decades.

This wasn’t a basement print job gone rogue. This was an organized, mass-scale forgery operation that duped collectors, shops, and even authentication companies.

Let’s run the hobby horror show recap:

• 100,000+ forged Tom Brady items

• 80,000 fake Kobe Bryant items dumped into the market posthumously

• Millions of fake Fanatics, Panini, Tristar, JSA, and Steiner holograms

• Auto-pen signatures so clean they passed player signings

• And a final act that ended in a police raid and someone taking their life.
  
  

🕵 How Did This Happen?

According to Brett’s now-infamous post, it started with one guy: Dominique from Carmel, Indiana. He funneled fakes through dozens of burner accounts under aliases like Steve Jordan and “dilliano,” mass-producing fake COAs and holograms using auto-pen machines and overseas signature vectoring.

His quote?

“I had every hologram from every company’s database. I typed ‘Mahomes,’ and out came 10,000 certified stickers.”

This man literally created a custom counterfeiting UI. It was ChatGPT for faking slabs.

🚨 What’s Even Real Anymore?

The post claimed:

• 97% of Tom Brady Tristar autos are fake

• 95% of Mahomes and Aaron Judge autos currently on the market were faked by them

• “Every company I touched is now my b*tch” 😬
  

He bragged about mixing real and fake inventory, faking entire signing events, and even fooling the athletes themselves. Bro was deep in the multiverse of mid.

🔥 So... What Now, Collector Fam?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
If you bought a signed memorabilia item in the last 20 years, especially Brady or Kobe? It might be fugazi.

And if you’ve ever said, “Well at least it has a hologram,” congrats—you just bought a shiny sticker from Brett’s label printer.

Do this now:

• Reevaluate any autos without full provenance

• Don’t trust COAs alone—especially old Tristar or Fanatics stock

• Ask questions. Document everything.

• And if your Kobe auto came out of nowhere in 2020... you might want to sit down
  
  

🧯 Final Thoughts from the Breakroom

This isn't just a scandal. It’s a collector’s identity crisis.

The guy behind this post didn’t just steal money—he stole trust, the single most valuable currency in the hobby. And he did it while sitting on an auto-pen for 8 hours a day like it was a Topps factory internship.

If this story teaches us anything, it's this:

The next time someone tries to sell you a $2,000 signed mini helmet “with COA”… maybe sip first, then rip.
And maybe—just maybe—don’t buy it from an account named “DillianoSports123.”

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